5-minute PACUS Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Mid-level Water Vapor and Upper-level Water Vapor images (above) displayed orographic waves downwind (southwest) of the Hawaiian Islands on 23 October 2025. With a ridge of high pressure north of Hawai’i (surface analyses), boundary layer flow from the northeast interacted with the topography of the island chain... Read More
10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-18 (GOES-West) daytime True Color RGB + nighttime Dust RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed a plume of resuspended volcanic ash (hazy shades of tan in True Color RGB, and shades of violet in Dust RGB) from the 1912 Novarupta-Katmai eruption in Alaska — which was being... Read More
Transverse cirrus bands — narrow cirrus cloud filaments oriented perpendicular to the mean wind flow at the altitude of those cloud features — have long been recognized as indicators of potential aircraft turbulence. Such was the case on 20 September 2025, when a Mesoscale Convective System over Kansas/Oklahoma began to exhibit transverse... Read More
5-minute PACUS Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Visible images (above) showed the hazy signature of resuspended volcanic ash (remaining from the 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens) that was being lofted from the surface by strong east-southeast winds — which were gusting as high as 38-42 mph at nearby RAWS sites — and being... Read More
