From coastal California to the Sierra Nevadas to the Rocky Mountains, precipitation totals this past winter reached historically high levels, especially when it comes to snowfall and mountain snowpack. The health of western watersheds in terms of mountain snow is readily apparent in VIIRS True and False Color imagery. ... Read More
NOAA’s newest satellite, NOAA-21, has started sending data to Earth with each overpass. The satellite launched 3 months ago as JPSS-2, and was renamed NOAA-21 once in orbit. NOAA-21 joins the Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 satellites in polar orbit around Earth. CIMSS acquires NOAA-21 views of North America via Direct Broadcast... Read More
According to NOAA’s Great Lakes Surface Environmental Analysis (GLSEA) the Great Lakes were 11.6% ice covered on February 2nd when an arctic air mass was descending southward over the region. The cold air boosted ice coverage to 14.7% on February 3rd, less than half of the average extent (1973-2022)... Read More
A multi-week “parade of storms” over the Pacific Ocean featuring a persistent atmospheric river pattern and numerous winter storms pounding the U.S. west coast has resulted in record snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas with water equivalency at 205% of normal for mid-January in the northern Sierras, 255% central, and... Read More
