Upper-level water vapor imagery, above, shows the development of standing waves in the lee of the Hawai’ian islands. (The waves were also apparent in mid-level and low-level water vapor imagery). Wave development as shown above requires a perturbation in the vertical — achieved by southwesterly flow in the atmosphere encountering... Read More
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) images from all 16 of the ABI spectral bands (above) displayed signatures of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California at 0859 UTC on 14 January 2024. Either a reflectance signature or a warm thermal signature of the Stage 1 rocket booster was... Read More
10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-18 (GOES-West) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) + Total Precipitable Water (TPW) images (above) showed the colder clouds associated with rain showers (with isolated embedded thunderstorms) and the clear-sky TPW field in the vicinity of Hawai`i during the 08-09 January 2024 time period. Surface analyses depicted a cold frontal boundary — which became more... Read More
GOES-18 (GOES-West) Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (above) revealed a well-defined Foehn gap (narrow ribbon of darker blue enhancement) near the spine of the Sierra Nevada range in California, along with a broad “orographic crest cloud” (darker green enhancement) that extended eastward across southeast California into southern Nevada on 06 January 2024.The corresponding... Read More
