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von Kármán vortex street in the Bering Sea

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-18 True Color RGB images, from 1730 UTC on 20 March to 0440 UTC on 21 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-18 (GOES-West) True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed a von Kármán vortex street — created by north-northwesterly winds interacting with the western tip of Nelson Island, Alaska — propagating south across the Bering Sea on 20 March 2025. In addition, through breaks in cloud cover the tidal ebb and flow of sea ice was apparent.

The vortices were also evident in Suomi-NPP Visible images valid at 2202 UTC and 2342 UTC (below).

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) images, valid at 2202 UTC and 2342 UTC on 20 March [click to enlarge]

In a toggle between the 2202 UTC Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible image and Topography (below), an arc of slightly elevated terrain along the far western tip of Nelson Island (abruptly rising to around 900 ft, darker shades of tan) likely perturbed the northerly flow enough to initiate formation of the von Kármán vortices.

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) image valid at 2202 UTC + Topography [click to enlarge]

Special thanks to Jason Ahsenmacher (NWS Fairbanks) for bringing this interesting feature to my attention.

Categories: Geo2Grid, GOES-18, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, VIIRS