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

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) showed a series of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) pulses emanating from the Mullen Fire in southeastern Wyoming on 19 September 2020. Each of the  pulses exhibited 10.35 µm brightness temperatures of -40ºC and colder  (shades of blue) — assuring the heterogeneous nucleation of... Read More