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Snow squalls (with some lightning) in Pennsylvania

By Scott Bachmeier •

1-minute GOES-16 Day Cloud Type RGB images, with an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density [click to play animated GIF| MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Cloud Type RGB images (above) displayed narrow bands of mixed phase to glaciated (brighter shades of green to yellow) clouds that produced snow squalls as they moved eastward across western and central Pennsylvania in the wake of a cold frontal passage on 10 March 2024. Periodic lightning activity — denoted by blue GLM Flash Extent Density pixels — was seen with some of these snow squall bands. These snow squalls briefly reduced the surface visibility to 1/4 mile at some sites.

The GOES-16 Day Cloud Type RGB image at 1519 UTC — with/without an overlay of GLM FlashExtent Density — included cursor displays of the corresponding Cloud Top Phase, Cloud Top Temperature and Cloud Top Height derived products near the center of one of the cloud bands (below).

GOES-16 Day Cloud Type RGB image at 1519 UTC — with/without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density — with cursor displays of the corresponding Cloud Top Phase (red), Cloud Top Temperature (blue) and Cloud Top Height (green) derived products [click to enlarge]

The Pittsburgh and State College NWS forecast offices issued numerous Snow Squall Warnings for these features.

Categories: GLM, GOES-16, Lightning, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Winter weather