With Spring comes the beginning of fire season for the United States, and with the help of satellite data, model output can provide information about future smoke and fires.

Fire weather outlooks are available from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC). These are qualitative categorical outlooks similar to those the SPC issues for severe weather. Also provided by NOAA is the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Smoke model, which forecasts smoke transport using a variety of inputs including radiances from GOES, MODIS, and VIIRS.

Both of these products are available in RealEarth, making it handy to gauge smoke and fire events across the United States and plan for future smoke and fire events. There are currently ‘elevated’ and ‘critical’ areas of New Mexico designated by the fire weather categorical outlooks. RealEarth is also available for Android and iOS.

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Due to the total solar eclipse over parts of the contiguous U.S. on April 8, 2024, there are many wondering what the cloud cover may be then.

Q: Will it be cloudy over the path of the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024?

A: We don’t know what the cloud cover will be on April 8th, 2024. To offer a clue, we can look to the past. The animation below is a geostationary visible image from April 8 over the last few decades. One image (~19 UTC) is shown for each day. The satellites include: SMS-1, GOES-3, SMS-2, GOES-5, GOES-6, GOES-7, GOES-8, GOES-12, GOES-13 and GOES-16 (here is a timeline of the U.S. geo imagers). The loop below (animated gif and mp4) is also available as an animated gif and mp4 with a quicker playback speed. The expected eclipse path is over-plotted. In addition, here is an interactive path plot page.

Also see this interactive web page, where the speed of the loop can be changed, the image annotated, etc.

Another option is this cloud climatology by Brian Brettschneider:

366 days from today a total solar eclipse will move from southwest to northeast across the Contiguous U.S. This map show the climatological (historical) cloud coverage for April 8th during the middle of the day. [This is not a forecast.] ?? pic.twitter.com/y4a65ZDCx9

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) April 8, 2023

Another cloud climatology, but from GOES.

Q: Will the NWS Weather Prediction Models include the total eclipse in their cloud forecasts?

A: We don’t know, but in 2017 certain experimental models did. Of course the cooling associated with the eclipse shadow can cause local changes to temperature, wind, cloud cover and other parameters.

Q: Is there a NOAA-operated sensor to provide rapid updates of cloud cover over the US?

A: Yes, there is a GOES constellation. There are many web sites (including the GOES Viewer) and phone apps to see realtime imagery.

Q: Isn’t there another solar eclipse coming up over the western U.S?

A: Yes, on October 14, 2023. Although that’s an annular (“ring“) eclipse, not a total eclipse. More, including the path.

Q: What might the moon’s shadow look like cast on the Earth during a total solar eclipse?

A: We have a good idea, based on previous cases from geostationary imagers, for example from 2017. Or see these other examples: 2019, 2020, 2020, 2021 and 2023 (2023).

Q: Can the cooling associated with a total solar eclipse affect the cloud patterns?

A: Yes it can, especially for “fair weather” cumulus. We saw from GOES the dissipation of certain clouds during the 2017 event (near St. Louis, MO).

Q: Should I look at the Sun without proper eye protection?

A: No.

Q: Is 99% close enough to experience the total eclipse?

A: No. Try to get into the region of totality.

H/T

These images were made using NASA and NOAA geostationary visible imagery with McIDAS-X software, from UW-Madison, SSEC. The images are via the SSEC Data Services. Thanks to Jim Nelson, Mat Gunshor, Scott Bachmeier and many others, including Kaba Bah. Thanks to Tom Whittaker for the java-script webapp (interactive web page). Thanks also for the Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA’s GSFC.

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Sentinel-1A overflew Samoan waters just around sunset on 25 April in American Samoa (as it does every 12 days at this time). At the overpass time, strong convection was moving slowly northward just to the east of the Sentinal SAR wind swath. The SAR Winds (shown below) show a wind speed boundary with strongest winds close to the eastern edge of the swath. The strongest winds — isolated spots of very strong winds (red and white in the enhancement) — in the scene below likely arise from a reflection of the SAR signal off abundant ice in the cloud. When the SAR Normalized Radar Cross Section is viewed, the ice “contamination” appears as a feathery structure. That’s shown in the NRCS figure at the bottom, taken from this ESA site; ice features are bright white, and if you zoom in, they’ll have a feathery structure. Sentinel-1A data fields are also available here, including, for this day, winds and NRCS.

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The recent Solar Eclipse that extended from the south Indian Ocean to the central north Pacific Ocean (Blog Post) traversed a region that is routinely monitored by different geostationary satellites — Himawari-9, GEOKOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) and FY-4A/FY-4B. Himawari-9 and GK2A have sub-satellite points on the Equator that are separated by only 12.5 degrees of Longitude (140.7^oE for Himawari-9, 128.2^oE for GK2A)! If you create full-disk imagery from the two satellites, stereoscopic views are achieved if one is able to cross their eyes and focus on the image in the middle. The Himawari-9 True-color imagery, above left, and the GK2A imagery, above right, were created using geo2grid (downloadable here). Geo2grid includes readers for both AHI HSD (Himawari Standard Data) data, and for AMI Level 1b data. If data are available (AHI HSD and AMI Le1b files are available at the SSEC Data Center, for example), the following two commands create images that lead to stereoscopy:

../geo2grid.sh -r ami_l1b -w geotiff -p true_color -f /path_to_AMIdata/2023_04_20_110/ami/le1b/fd*ge/*0440.nc../geo2grid.sh -r ahi_hsd -w geotiff -p true_color -f /path_to_AHIdata/ahi/2023/2023_04_20_110/0440/*FLDK*

These two commands will create native-resolution (22000×22000!) True-Color images at 0440 UTC on 20 April 2023. The animation above shows data from 0200 through 0700 UTC. All images created images were resized and annotated, and placed side-by-side, with Himawari data to the left, and GK2A data to the right. The resultant animation can be viewed in three dimensions.

Thanks to Bodo Zeschke (ABoM) for noting that “easy” stereoscopic imagery could be created for this event. Thanks also to both KMA and JMA for the data.

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