Solar radiation at 0.86 µm is strongly absorbed by water on the surface, but reflected by land. There is therefore a big contrast in GOES-16 “Veggie” Band imagery between rivers and adjacent land, and that contrast difference can easily identify regions of inundation. The toggle above compares imagery from 26 February 2018 and... Read More

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (above) showed the flow of moisture from the lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley on 24 February 2018 — this fueled the development of flooding rainfall and severe thunderstorms (for more details, see the Satellite Liaison Blog). A special 21 UTC sounding from Little Rock AR indicated 37.3 mm... Read More

An explosive eruption of Mount Sinabung began at 0153 UTC on 19 February 2018. Himawari-8 False-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (above) showed the primary plume of high-altitude ash moving northwestward, with ash at lower altitudes spreading out to the south and southeast of the volcano.Mutli-spectral retrievals of Ash... Read More

Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images (above) showed Cyclone Kelvin as it made landfall in Western Australia as a Category 1 storm on 18 February 2018. Kelvin continued to intensify shortly after making landfall, with estimated winds of 80 gusting to 100 knots — and a distinct eye feature could be seen... Read More