The East Troublesome Fire in Colorado expanded greatly on 21 October (click here for more information), and produced pyrocumulus clouds.  NOAA-20 overflew the fire at around 1930 UTC (linked-to overpass map from this site) on 21 October, and NUCAPS profiles, shown above, diagnosed the stability of the mid- and upper-troposphere.  The toggle below between the NOAA-20 VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared (11.45 µm) imagery and NUCAPS Sounding availability... Read More

Low-level water vapor imagery, above, from early morning on 17 October 2020, shows the characteristics of strong low-level winds in the lee of the Colorado Rockies, namely a warm trench and herringbone-like structures that suggest turbulent flow. This region is near the Cameron Peak fire, a long-lived conflagration to the west of... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) and Fire Temperature Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (above) showed diurnal changes in the Cameron Peak Fire in northern Colorado on 14 October 2020. Aided by strong westerly winds at the surface (with peak gusts in the 50-70 mph range), the fire’s thermal signature initially began... Read More

GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed plumes of smoke drifting across parts of Colorado on 30 September 2020. The most smoke prominent plume originated from the Mullen Fire in far southern Wyoming — which produced a pyroCb cloud on 19 September.On the following morning, the hazy signature of... Read More