According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were 11 fires with a total of 90,679 acres burning in California on 22 October 2007Â –Â many of the larger fires where described as “0% contained”, and large-scale evacuations were declared from San Diego to Malibu. An animation of GOES-11 visible channel images (above) shows large... Read More
Hot and dry Santa Ana conditions across southern California (with wind gusts as high as 91 mph in Los Angeles county and 87 mph in Ventura county) caused widespread blowing dust/sand (reducing surface visibility to 3 miles at Ontario, station identifier KONT) and created an environment that allowed several large... Read More
The National Hurricane Center began issuing advisories on Tropical Depression 15 (located in the central Atlantic, east of Bermuda) on 11 October 2007. A GOES-12 visible image with ASCAT wind data sourced from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones website (above) suggested that maximum winds were only around 30 knots.There was strong southwesterly flow aloft over the developing... Read More
“Lee waves” are sometimes seen just downwind of significant topography (such as high mountain ranges) when strong winds are perpendicular to the ridge lines — but even relatively subtle terrain features can produce lee wave clouds that are evident on satellite imagery (one such example of lee wave clouds in... Read More
