One reason the “What the heck is this?” blog category was created was for situations when we struggle to provide a scientifically-sound explanation of interesting features seen on satellite imagery. Take for example the NOAA-17 AVHRR Infrared (10.8 µm) image (above): it shows what appears to be an elongated “warm... Read More
Very cold air was becoming established across the interior of Alaska during the last few days of December 2008. AWIPS images of the 4-km resolution GOES-11 10.7 µm IR channel (above) showed large areas exhibiting very cold IR brightness temperatures (colder than -40º C, darker blue color enhancement) which were... Read More
A NOAA-16 AVHRR 11.0 µm IR image (above) showed cold brightness temperatures of -10º to -20º C (violet colors) across much of northwestern Alaska on 30 September 2008. The coldest IR brightness temperatures of around -27º C or -17º F (darker blue colors) corresponded to the higher elevations of the... Read More
What do you do on the last day of meteorological summer if you’re in southeastern Nunavut or far northern Manitoba in Canada? You watch fresh snow cover melt! AWIPS images of the MODIS visible channel, snow/ice channel, and Land Surface Temperature product on Read More
