Tropical Storm Marco over the northwest Caribbean Sea, shown above in a toggle of GOES-16 ABI Clean window imagery (10.3 µm) and a NUCAPS diagnosis of 850-500mb lapse rates, is over very warm waters and in a region of favorably low diagnosed vertical wind shear. (Wind shear is from this website, (direct link to shear); the product is described here)  An inhibiting feature in strengthening, as noted in the National Hurricane Center discussion, is stable... Read More

A previous blog post (link) detailed how to access NOAA CLASS to create Gridded NUCAPS (NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System) imagery from those data.  (You can also view some gridded NUCAPS fields here;  click here to see the 850-mb field of Temperature from that site, it is very similar to... Read More

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