Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second interval GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) — which showed thunderstorms that produced tornadoes, large hail (up to 4.4 inches in diameter) and damaging winds (SPC Storm Reports) across western Oklahoma on 30 April 2024. Pulses of overshooting tops and evidence of Above-Anvil Cirrus Plumes (reference | VISIT training | blog posts) were... Read More

For a period of about 45 days on either side of the Spring (Vernal) and Fall (Autumnal) Equinox (NOAA OSPO Bulletin), each GOES briefly passes through the Moon’s shadow (requiring it to operate on battery power). Near the times of the satellite “local midnight” — around 0900 UTC for GOES-18 and 0500... Read More

Every Spring and Fall Equinox season, a brief period of solar Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) occurs whenever the Sun passes into the beam of a GOES ground station receiving antenna (2023 NOAA ESPC Notification). This RFI can cause a temporary degradation or even a complete loss of data reception. The exact time of... Read More

After an outage of about a week brought on by an anomaly in NOAA-20 (since fixed), NUCAPS profiles have re-appeared in AWIPS workstations, starting with the 1713 UTC overpass over the Eastern United States, shown above. One use for NUCAPS is to gauge how well a forecast is evolving. For... Read More