An Air Canada flight encountered severe turbulence southwest of Hawai’i on 11 July 2019, which injured 37 passengers (media report 1 | media report 2 | pilot report text | pilot report location | flight path | flight data). GOES-17 (GOES-West)  Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images (above) and Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (below) revealed subtle gravity waves propagating westward... Read More

For the first time since 1924, a major eruption of the Raikoke volcano occurred around 1800 UTC on 21 June 2019. Himawari-8 False Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (above) showed — via the brighter yellow areas — that a large portion of the volcanic plume was rich... Read More

Strong winds — gusting as high as 77 mph in New Mexico and 88 mph in Texas — associated with a rapidly-intensifying midlatitude cyclone generated large plumes of blowing dust (originating from southeastern Arizona,southern New Mexico, northern Mexico and western Texas) on 10 April 2019. GOES-16 (GOES-East) Split Window (10.3-12.3 µm) images (above)... Read More

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm), Cloud Top Height, Cloud Particle Size Distribution, and Cloud Phase (above) helped to characterize standing wave clouds that developed to the lee of the Appalachian Mountains on 07 March 2019. The primary standing wave rotor clouds were composed of smaller supercooled water droplets,  with “banner clouds” composed... Read More