Sentinel-1A overflew the Hawai’ian islands twice, once on 26 February and again on 27 February. The animation above shows the AWIPS presentation of SAR winds at 1616 UTC on 26 February. Images from the NOAA/STAR website for those two footprints are shown below as toggles between the derived wind speed and the... Read More
Sentinel-1A overflew the Samoan Islands shortly after sunset on 11 February and captured a packet of very strong winds just to the west of Tutuila Island of American Samoa. The toggle above compares Band 13 imagery with two different enhancements of the SAR Winds: one (here) highlighting the different Beaufort Scales,... Read More
As noted in the past blog post, the NWS Water Surface Conditions / Synthetic Aperture Radar Science Team has arranged for observations over the Samoan Islands on 9 dates between 30 January 2023 and 5 March 2023 (imagery is available online here). The image above shows both the derived winds and the Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) from 0556... Read More
SAR data are being acquired over American Samoa for the next several weeks. SAR data from a Sentinel-1A overpass at 0553 UTC on 31 January, shown above (from this website), shows mostly light winds, mostly less than 10 m/s. The Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) data can be used to view any ice contamination in the wind speed image.... Read More
