GOES-12 visible channel images (above; Java animation) showed a linear mesoscale convective system developing across parts of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin on 28 August 2007. Note the picturesque shadows cast by the individual cumulonimbus towers building in northeastern Iowa between 21:00 and 22:00 UTC. The larger cluster of thunderstorms in north-central/northeastern... Read More
Derechos are long-lived convectively-driven wind storms. In the upper midwest, they typically form in northwesterly flow just poleward of very warm and moist air and then surge southward. Convection overnight on 13-14 August 2007 developed into a long-lasting complex with a bow echo that propagated from north of Minneapolis to... Read More
An mesoscale phenomenon that sometimes emerges out of Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCS) is the Mesoscale Convective Vortex (MCV). Intense latent heating within the rain core of an MCS can help spin up a vortex that will occasionally live on even as the MCS that spawned it withers away. The spin-up can be visualized as a potential... Read More
As much as we enjoy evangelizing satellite imagery and demonstrating all its useful applications, there are situations when satellite imagery simply is not as helpful as we would hope it might be. On 11 July 2007, a lightning strike started a fire at the Sunoco Oil Refinery near West Deptford, New Jersey... Read More
