The Day-Night Band on VIIRS, flying on the Suomi/NPP satellite gave an excellent view of Isaac at strong tropical storm strength in the northern Gulf of Mexico shortly after midnight on August 28 2012. VIIRS is providing something unique to forecasters: Visible imagery at night that allows easy identification of overshooting... Read More
Tropical Storm Isaac continues a track towards the central Gulf Coast of the United States (See the National Hurricane Center for further information). The GOES-14 animation above, with images shown every 5 minutes over the course of 5 hours, suggests that intensification has not occurred despite the presence of very warm waters (and low... Read More
GOES-14 is in SRSOR operations today and was well-positioned to monitor the flooding rains that occurred in Las Vegas (which received a daily record 1.65 inches of rainfall). The animation above shows cold cloud tops northeast of Las Vegas, with more convection moving in from the southwest. Click here for a large (85... Read More
Water clouds, such as those that develop when fog and low stratus form, have different emissivity properties at short IR wavelengths (around 3.9 µm) compared to longer IR wavelengths (around 11 µm). At shorter IR wavelengths, water cloud do not emit as blackbodies, meaning less radiation is emitted than is... Read More
