When cloud top temperatures are very cold, the 3.9 µm imagery will have characteristics that suggest a noisy signal.  The 45-minute animation above shows a cold cloud top east of Florida in 4 different infrared channels:  3.9 µm (Upper Left), 10.3 µm (Upper Right), 8.5 µm (Lower Left) and 12.3 µm (Lower Right).  That... Read More

Severe thunderstorms developed along and ahead of a cold front that was moving across the Northeastern US on 15 May 2018. 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed the progression of these storms — and SPC storm reports (plotted in red, and parallax-corrected to align with the corresponding cloud-top feature) included an... Read More

Fires that developed over the plains of Saskatchewan, near Meadow Lake in west-central Saskatchewan, and near Prince Albert in central Saskatchewan, showed up well in Visible and Infrared imagery, shown above.  A wind shift that occurred as the fires burned changed the direction of the smoke plume.  Prince Albert had visibilities that dropped... Read More

A GOES-16 Mesoscale Sector produced 1-minute imagery as a strong thunderstorm complex approached Washington DC late in the afternoon/early evening of 14 May 2018.  The (150-megabyte (!!)) animated gif above shows overshooting tops quickly developing and decaying as the complex moved over the Potomac Basin.  Winds in excess of 60... Read More