In regions without radar, satellite estimates of rainfall intensity are vital in understanding precipitation. Microwave estimates have an advantage in that microwave energy is not strongly affected by clouds, so the internal structure of the cloud that can affect rainfall distribution can be detected. (However, microwave data has poorer spatial... Read More
Blizzard warning were hoisted over the high plains of Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma for a strong storm on 8 January 2024 (image from the weather.gov website). The animation above shows visible imagery overlain with LightningCast probabilities centered over Kansas. Convection occurring over the cold aid will lead... Read More
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
