The animation above shows the Nighttime Microphysics RGB (saved from the CSPP Geosphere site) over the islands of American Samoa. (An animated gif is available here). The annotated animation below highlights several features that are typical of convective development detection at night. Low clouds become apparent shortly before 1450 UTC (when they are circled); subsequent color changes in... Read More

The mp4 animation above (produced using CSPP Geosphere‘s latest beta version) shows strong convection over Oklahoma and the eastern Texas panhandle, with lower clouds (in a bluish hue) over the northwestern Texas panhandle. With time, the Night Microphysics RGB acquires a reddish hue (as cloud tops cool), and then convection develops.... Read More

LightningCast (available here) is a CIMSS-developed product (created at the request of OPC and WPC) designed to relate current ABI fields (Band 2 (0.64 µm), 5 (1.61 µm), 13 (10.3 µm) and 15 (12.3 µm)) to the likelihood of future lightning. (A short training video on this product is available... Read More

The animation above shows GOES-16 visible imagery (Band 2, 0.64 µm) and stability indices. Initially an obvious gradient in stability is present where isolated convection is developing over southwestern Wisconsin. As the gradient relaxes, the convection dissipates even though instability is, in general increasing. A radar animation (clipped from RealEarth)... Read More