A strong extratropical cyclone that deposited snow in the deep south developed explosively during the early morning hours of 4 January 2018. The GOES-16 Clean Window (10.3 µm) animation, above, from 0102 – 1337 UTC on 4 January, brackets the explosive development: from 993 hPa at 0000 UTC to 968 mb at 0900 UTC, a strengthening that easily meets the “Bomb” criteria set forth by Sanders and Gyakum (1980).... Read More

The initial impacts of a large Eastern US winter storm were seen in a comparison of GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) images (above) on 03 January 2018 — areas of southeastern Georgia received freezing rain and/or 1-6 inches of snowfall. As clouds began to dissipate, the resulting snow... Read More

A prescribed burn — the SureEnough fire — in central Montana was viewed by GOES-15 (GOES-West), GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-13 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) imagery on 02 January 2018. The images are shown in the native projection for each of the 3 satellites.Due to the improved spatial resolution of the GOES-16 3.9 µm... Read More

The very cold and dry airmass over the eastern half of the United States during early January 2018 is mostly devoid of water vapor, a gas that, when present, absorbs certain wavelengths of radiation that is emitted from the surface (or low clouds). That absorbed energy is then re-emitted from... Read More