TJ Turnage, the Science and Operations Officer (SOO) at the National Weather Service forecast office in Grand Rapids, noted today the presence of smooth, curving bands over Lake Michigan. The animation above shows their development — and the smooth appearance of the bands (just offshore of Ottawa Co, and curving into... Read More
Gridded NUCAPS fields include a wide range of thermodynamic variables. The plot above shows the 900-mb temperature field. Is it possible to use this data to diagnose a rain/snow transition line? Over southern New England, the relationship between 900-mb temperatures and surface precipitation observations seems robust: snow is restricted to... Read More
GOES-16 (GOES-East) Air Mass RGB images (above) displayed the characteristic pale yellow hues associated with cold arctic air that was moving southward behind a deep area of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay and northern Quebec, Canada on 12 February 2020.A sequence of GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) and Day Snow-Fog RGB images (below)... Read More
Gridded NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System fields in AWIPS (and elsewhere, such as this excellent site) include retrieved values of ozone (O3), an important gas. In high concentrations in the upper troposphere, O3 is a marker for the presence of stratospheric air. In the animation above, high concentrations of ozone are present... Read More
