TJ Turnage, the Science and Operations Officer (SOO) at the National Weather Service forecast office in Grand Rapids, noted today the presence of smooth, curving bands over Lake Michigan. The animation above shows their development — and the smooth appearance of the bands (just offshore of Ottawa Co, and curving into... Read More
GOES-16 (GOES-East) Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm) images (above) showed that this spectral band was able to sense the surface due to the presence of a cold and dry arctic air mass over the Upper Midwest on 13 February 2020 (the coldest surface air temperature that morning was -39ºF at Kabetogama in northern... Read More
GOES-17 IFR Probability fields are being evaluated at CIMSS (the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies), with a plan to release them to the field via an LDM request in the near future. The toggle above compares GOES-16 IFR Probability and GOES-17 IFR Probability for the same time over central... Read More
Gridded NUCAPS fields include a wide range of thermodynamic variables. The plot above shows the 900-mb temperature field. Is it possible to use this data to diagnose a rain/snow transition line? Over southern New England, the relationship between 900-mb temperatures and surface precipitation observations seems robust: snow is restricted to... Read More
