2.5-minute rapid scan JMA Himawari-8 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed Category 5 Super Typhoon Goni in the West Pacific Ocean on 30 October 2020. The images revealed a very small “pinhole eye”, surface mesovortices within the eye and a trochoidal motion — all characteristics of a tropical cyclone... Read More

After making landfall as a Category 1 Hurricane along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula a day earlier, a weakened Tropical Storm Zeta (NHC advisories) began to slowly re-intensify as it moved northward across the Gulf of Mexico after sunset on 27 October 2020 — 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images with an overlay 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 a period of extreme behavior of the East Troublesome Fire in Colorado around and just after sunset on 21 October 2020. This rapidly-growing wildfire produced a series of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds — the coldest pyroCb cloud-top 10.35 µm infrared brightness temperatures... Read More

The East Troublesome Fire in Colorado expanded greatly on 21 October (click here for more information), and produced pyrocumulus clouds.  NOAA-20 overflew the fire at around 1930 UTC (linked-to overpass map from this site) on 21 October, and NUCAPS profiles, shown above, diagnosed the stability of the mid- and upper-troposphere.  The toggle below between the NOAA-20 VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared (11.45 µm) imagery and NUCAPS Sounding availability... Read More