Saint Patrick’s Day over the Midwest was unusually clear, affording great images of the Great Lakes from the MODIS instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. The loop above includes the Visible imagery, the cirrus detection channel (1.38 micrometers), the snow-ice detection channel (2.1 micrometers), the derived lake-surface temperatures and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI).Close-up views of the individual lake basins: Ontario, Erie, Michigan-Huron... Read More

McIDAS images comparing 1-km resolution GOES-12 and GOES-13 0.65 µm visible channel data (above) revealed several smoke plumes over parts of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, while the corresponding 4-km resolution GOES-12 and GOES-13 3.9 µm shortwave IR images (below) showed numerous “hot spots” (black to yellow to red pixels)... Read More

Early morning visible imagery shows a region of modest convection developing into an arc in the Gulf of Mexico south of Louisiana. Radar imagery at 11 UTC shows a concentrated region of strong convection in the marine environment. Which satellite data can be used to identify the regions most at risk for convection in... Read More

The visible imagery loop from GOES-12, above, shows cirrus clouds around southern Wisconsin at 1315 UTC on 16 March (1st image in loop), and at 2215 UTC on 16 March (last image in loop), but relatively few at 1615 UTC (middle image). In contrast, the infrared imagery loop (here), indicates... Read More