Friend of the Blog Patrick Ayd, Science Operations Officer at NWS Duluth, passed on this interesting observation from the morning of 15 July 2026. The ongoing wildfires in Minnesota and Ontario, which we discussed in a blog post a few days ago, show up amazingly well when looking at the VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB). The... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images with an overlay of the Fire Mask derived product (above) showed the smoke plumes and thermal signatures associated with numerous wildfires across far northeastern Minnesota and southern Ontario on 13 July 2026. An elevated fire risk was in place, due to very warm surface... Read More

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) images (above) showed the development of a large wildfire southeast of Lytton, British Columbia (CWLY) — which produced multiple pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds on 07 July 2026. Each pyroCb exhibited cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures in the -40s C (shades of blue) to -50s C (shades of red) —... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) GeoColor RGB images (above) showed the dense smoke plume associated with the Aspen Acres Fire in southeastern Colorado on 29 June 2026. As the smoke plume drifted northeast across the Pueblo Airport, it restricted the surface visibility to 2 miles at times.1-minute GOES-18 GeoColor RGB images with plots of... Read More