An analysis of the Saharan Air Layer, above (from this website), shows dry conditions stretching from Africa to the southwestern Atlantic, wrapping around the clouds associated with a strong tropical disturbance that is forecast to move northwestward over the Lesser and Greater Antilles in the next couple days.  (Both the dry air... Read More

Real Earth captured the cold cloud tops associated with vigorous convection with tropical storm Gonzalo shortly after midnight on 24 July 2020.   The VIIRS Imagery from NOAA-20, above, (the day’s NOAA-20 passes in the region (from this site) are shown here) shows numerous cloud tops colder than -80ºC (the purple enhancement).True-color imagery... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) showed the formation of Hurricane Douglas — the first hurricane of the 2020 season in the East Pacific Ocean — on 22 July 2020. Douglas was the 4th latest formation of the first hurricane on record in this... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images — with and without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density (above) — showed the development of a large Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) that developed over North Dakota and began moving eastward into Minnesota on 17 July 2020 (surface analyses). These thunderstorms produced... Read More