The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha?apai volcano in Tonga violently erupted around 2030 UTC on 19 December 2021 — and a radiometrically-retrieved Ash Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (using JMA Himawari-8 data) indicated that ash was ejected as high as 16-18 km (above).Ash Loading was very high within the volcanic cloud, with particles... Read More
A sequence of 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Dust RGB and Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (above) showed the development of dense plumes of blowing dust (whose source regions were primarily in southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandles) on 15 December 2021. These dust plumes were being lofted by strong winds along and behind a cold... Read More
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) include time-matched plots of SPC Storm Reports during a large outbreak of severe weather across parts of the Midwest and Southeast US from late in the day on 10 December to a few hours after midnight on 11 December 2021. The severe thunderstorms developed in advance of a strong... Read More
As an anomalously-deep Kona low moved northwest of and then west of Hawai`i during the 04-07 December 2021 period, it began to tap moisture from the Pacific ITCZ and channel it northward across the islands — setting the stage for a prolonged heavy rainfall event (which produced the wettest December day on record at Honolulu). Hourly MIMIC TPW images viewed... Read More
