GOES-11 (GOES-West) Visible (daytime) and 3.9 µm Shortwave Infrared (nighttime) imagery (above) revealed an interesting cyclonic vortex which was propagating westward across the eastern North Pacific Ocean on 13-14 March 2007. The radial banded cloud features that form such a cloud “swirl” are known as actinae or actinoform clouds, and they are occasionally seen in the marine stratocumulus cloud field over the Pacific Ocean (one such case was June 1997). This type of cloud pattern was first observed back in 1962 on TIROS V imagery near Hawaii.

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Thick fog forming in southern portions of Osceola county in Florida was a factor in causing a multiple vehicle accident along the Florida Turnpike during the morning of 13 March 2007. AWIPS images of the MODIS and GOES fog/stratus brightness temperature difference several hours before the accident (above) shows how the 1-km resolution MODIS product had better skill at depicting the location and coverage of the fog (compared to the 4-km resolution GOES product).

Smoke from small brush fires in that area on the previous day was thought to have helped to further reduce surface visibilities along with the fog; an AWIPS image of the GOES-12 3.9 µm Shortwave Infrared channel (below) shows a “hot spot” (red enhancement) associated with a fire that was burning just west of the Florida Turnpike in central Osceola county at 21:31 UTC on 12 March. The GOES-12 3.9 µm brightness temperature at that particular hot pixel was +40ºC; however, most of the brush fires in that area were apparently too small in size to produce similar hot spots at other image times, and the CIMSS Wildfire ABBA product only indicated a few brief fire pixels in central Florida during the day on 12 March.

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A very large and long-lived Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) developed over Texas during the pre-dawn hours on 12 March 2007, which produced reports of tornadoes, hail up to 2.5 inches in diameter, and damaging winds up to 95 mph (SPC storm reports). AWIPS images of the GOES-12 10.7µm InfraRed (IR) channel (above; QuickTime animation) shows the areal extent of cold cloud top temperatures associated with the developing MCS — IR cloud top temperatures were as cold as -72º C / -97º F (black enhancement) at 03:30 and 11:15 UTC. The supercell convection that first developed across the Big Bend region and over central Texas did exhibit enhanced-v signatures from about 23:00 UTC on 11 March to 03:00 UTC on 12 March.

The MCS eventually developed Line Echo Wave Pattern (LEWP) structures, which were evident in the cloud to ground (CG) lightning strike data (below; QuickTime animation) — in fact, this severe convection produced over 1000 CG strikes every 15 minutes during the 09-10 UTC period. Later in the day, new convective development produced heavy rainfall (including reports of 2.00 inches in a 1 hour period, and a total of 6.94 inches) in the Brownsville, Texas area — GOES sounder derived product imagery displayed Total Precipitable Water (TPW) values of 46 mm (1.8 inch) and Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) values of 2480 J/kg over that region several hours earlier.

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An extensive deck of stratus cloud was evident across much of northern Minnesota and adjacent portions of the Dakotas and Wisconsin during the daytime hours on 08 March 2007. An AWIPS 4-panel display of MODIS imagery (above) shows how different this cloud feature appeared in the various channels. The stratus appeared much darker than the surrounding clear (but snow-covered) ground on the 3.7 µm shortwave IR (Band 20) image (above; upper left panel), due to that channel’s sensitivity to solar radiation reflected off the top of the supercooled droplet cloud layer. On the other hand, this supercooled water droplet cloud feature appeared much brighter than the dark surrounding snow-covered ground on the 2.1 µm near-IR (Band 7) image (above; upper right panel), since snow and ice are strong absorbers at that wavelength. Cloud top temperatures were fairly uniform (around -8 to -10º C) on the 11.0 µm IR Window (Band 31) image (above; lower right panel). However, it is interesting to note that this stratiform cloud deck was semi-transparent on the 0.65 µm visible (Band 1) image (above; lower left panel), allowing several of the larger frozen lakes in northern Minnesota to be seen through the cloud — the frozen lakes (and other surface features such as river valleys and ice in Lake Superior) could also be seen through the stratus cloud deck on GOES-12 visible channel imagery (Java animation).

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The transparency of the stratus deck was somewhat surprising given the opaque appearance on the other near-IR and IR MODIS channels, and the fact the cloud layer was apparently fairly thick: surface reports across that region indicated cloud bases between 300-800 ft above ground level, and the GOES sounder Effective Cloud Amount product (below; lower left panel) and the Cloud Top Height product (below; lower right panel) indicated overcast (100%) coverage (yellow enhancement) with cloud tops in the 11,000-13,000 ft range (green enhancement). The rawinsonde profile at Minneapolis, Minnesota at 00 UTC on 09 March (a few hours after the MODIS images) indicated that a very strong and deep temperature inversion existed within the 800-900 hPa layer, which was probably where the bulk of the stratiform cloud layer actually existed. The air was not particularly moist above the temperature inversion, but another cloud deck could also have existed near the top of the 625-800 hPa layer — such a higher cloud layer may have been responsible for the cloud top height values of 11,000-13,000 ft seen on the GOES sounder product below.

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