The National Weather Service forecast office on Guam (where the National Weather Service day begins!) has a very large Area Of Responsibility (AOR), as shown in this image; it stretches from the Equator northward to 25^oN, and from the dateline west to 130^oE. At ca. 1800 UTC on 1 April 2024 (no foolin’!) the RealEarth domain for LightningCast (at this website) was expanded from a relatively small footprint that covered the Marianas to one that covers the entire Guam AOR, including the Marshall and Marianas Islands, as shown by the red rectangle in the toggle above.

CIMSS is also providing AWIPS-ready tiles to the NWS Pacific Region for inclusion into AWIPS machines in Guam and Honolulu, and those AWIPS machines have been modified to accept the new data. The toggle below is courtesy Eric Jacobsen, Pacific Region Headquarters, and shows the domain change in AWIPS.

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CIMSS Scientists have adjusted the presentation of individual thermodynamic variables produced from HEAP (NUCAPS) profiles for NOAA-20 overpasses that are available here in near-real time (at that website, chose j01 (that is, NOAA-20), crisfsr, and then images); HEAP software that supports NOAA-21 data is not yet available. Previously (above) values were color-coded for the entire size of the gridded CrIS/ATMS footprint. Now (below), values are color-coded for the centroid of the that same footprint. Analyses are provided via the CSPP Leo Direct Broadcast processing for thermodynamic (Temperature, Relative Humidity, Dewpoint and water vapor mixing ratio) at 247, 496, 753 and 904 mb.

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Software that creates these images is available at the CSPP website, both for the HEAP software and for the Sounding Quicklooks software.

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Today marks the 64th anniversary of the first image from the meteorological satellite TIROS-1, which was available on 01 April 1960. While TIROS-1 was only operational for 78 days, it provided a number of images of the Earth and cloud systems (including the first image of a tropical cyclone, over the South Pacific Ocean on 10 April 1960).

However, this information suggests that the TIROS-1 image shown above — which has gained notoriety as being the first — was actually taken at 1608 UTC on 02 April 1960! Apparently the true “first image” from TIROS-1 was taken at 1331 UTC on 01 April 1960, which is shown below (courtesy of Rick Kohrs, SSEC).

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United Airlines Flight 85 (UAL85) encountered severe turbulence as it was on approach to landing at Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR) — which injured 22 passengers, with 7 of those being transported to a hospital (media report 1 | media report 2) late in the day on 29 March 2024. Gusty NW winds may have contributed to the turbulence (which likely occurred around 2138 UTC, according to flight data from FlightAware — note the rapid rate of ascent beginning at that time); the peak wind gust at KEWR was 48 knots or 55 mph at 2039 UTC. After UAL85 aborted its landing at KEWR, it diverted north to New York Stewart International Airport (KSWF), landing at 2208 UTC (above).

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm) images (below) depicted widespread mountain waves across southeastern New York and northern New Jersey during that time. These mountain waves could also have played a role in creating boundary layer turbulence. The Pilot Report (PIREP) for this UAL85 incident did not appear in the real-time AWIPS data, probably due to time restraints imposed upon the flight crew to get the aircraft safely diverted as quickly as possible.

In a faster animation of GOES-16 Water Vapor images without plots of surface reports (below), note that the mountain wave structure across northern New Jersey (including near KEWR) becomes slightly deformed, and even begins to move westward a few miles.

A toggle between GOES-16 Water Vapor imagery and Topography (below) indicated that these mountain waves were forming downwind of the Catskills in New York and the Poconos in Pennsylvania.

Plots of rawinsonde data from Albany NY and Upton NY (below) both showed adiabatic or near-adiabatic lapse rates below the 800-850 hPa pressure level — which aided in the downward transport of momentum (stronger winds) aloft to the surface earlier in the day.

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