The VIIRS instrument on NASA’s recently-launched NPP satellite began to acquire imagery on 21 November 2011 (NASA news release). True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from two of the early satellite passes are shown, which cover a swath from Brazil to eastern Canada from 16:10 to 16:35 UTC (above) and another swath covering much of eastern... Read More

1-km resolution GOES-13 0.63 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation) revealed a mesoscale vortex (or “mesolow”) propagating slowly westward across the western end of Lake Ontario on 21 November 2011. The GOES-13 satellite had been placed into Rapid Scan Operations (RSO) mode, providing images as frequently as every... Read More

A comparison of an AWIPS image of 1-km resolution MODIS 0.65 µm visible channel data with the corresponding MODIS false color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) image created using the 2.1 µm “snow/ice channel” (above) showed that snow cover was beginning to increase in areal extent across parts of the north-central US on... Read More

We received the following email from Ken Waters of the National Weather Service forecast office in Phoenix, Arizona:I noticed something interesting in this morning’s visible imagery off the Baja California coast. Here’s a link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2ktDMIN5qWfODI2OTYzYjgtZjJkMS00MTU5LTk2ODctYzdhNzY5M2Y2MWIx I’m looking at the apparent wave pattern that’s going “upstream” towards the northeast whereas the low... Read More