From 1500 to 1900 UTC on 4 January 2024, GOES-16 was in Mode 4 (vs. the usual Mode 6) operations. Mode 4 scanning produces a full-disk image every 5 minutes. Mesoscale sectors and CONUS sectors are not scanned (although a CONUS sector can of course be subsected out of the... Read More
Night Microphysics RGB imagery from the CSPP Geosphere site (link to a very similar animation to the one above) shows a line of tropical cumulus approaching Samoa. There are subtle color changes in that RGB that typically presage convective development (as also shown in this blog post, for example), and as highlighted in the annotated animation below that covers 0830-1230 UTC. The... Read More
MIMIC Total Preciptable Water (TPW) Fields (from this site), below, for the 24 hours ending 1300 UTC on 26 December 2023, show the Samoan Islands (at 13-14oS, ~172oW) in the middle of the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) that stretches east-southeastward across the South Pacific. Pago Pago has received more than 20″... Read More
Turbulence early on 24 December on a flight (Airbus A-300) from Barbados to Manchester (Scotland) led to a diversion (to Bermuda) and hospitalization (albeit with non-life-threatening injuries) of about a dozen passengers. The graphic below shows the path of the flight with data taken from FlightAware.com. The green parts of... Read More
