As a follow-up to this 15 June blog post, GOES-16 (GOES-East) Split Window Difference (10.3 µm – 12.3 µm) and Dust RGB (Red-Green-Blue) images (above) displayed signatures of another dense plume of Saharan Air Layer dust — which appeared as shades of yellow in the Split Window Difference images, and shades of magenta in the Dust RGB images — that was... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) showed the smoke plume and thermal anomaly (cluster of hot pixels) associated with the Magnum Fire in northern Arizona on 12 June 2020. The hottest Shortwave Infrared brightness temperatures observed were 138.7ºC (411.9 K), which is the saturation temperature for... Read More

GOES-17 (GOES-West) Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (above) showed the circulation of an anomalous middle-tropospheric cutoff low over the northwestern portion of Alaska on 12 June 2020. A Potential Vorticity (PV) anomaly associated with this low was causing the dynamic tropopause — represented by the pressure of the PV1.5 surface —... Read More

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) showed the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud that was spawned by the Bringham Fire in extreme eastern Arizona during the afternoon hours on 11 June 2020. To be classified as a pyroCb, the deep convective... Read More