US Space Force EWS-G1 — formerly GOES-13 — Infrared Window (10.7 µm) images (above) showed Cyclone Freddy in the South Indian Ocean, after it re-intensified to a Category 4 storm at 0000 UTC on 15 February 2023. Freddy then briefly peaked at 145 knots at 0000 UTC on 16 February (SATCON), making it the first Category 5 tropical cyclone of 2023.

Meteosat-9 Infrared Window (10.8 µm) images from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below) included contours and streamlines of deep-layer (850-200 hPa) wind shear. The intensification of Freddy occurred in spite of this environment of moderate east-southeasterly shear.

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Two SAR satellite (RADARSAT-2 and RCM-1) overpasses occurred at 0000 UTC on 16 February, as noted here.

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True Color RGB images — created using Geo2Grid — from GOES-18 (GOES-West), GOES-17 and GOES-16 (GOES-East) (above) displayed dense plumes of blowing dust across parts of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma on 14 February 2023. Strong winds (with gusts in the 60-85 mph range) in the wake of a cold front lofted dry topsoil from areas that were experiencing Moderate to Exceptional Drought conditions.

GOES-17 (formerly GOES-West) was temporarily operating from its pre-storage checkout position over the Equator at 104.7 W longitude.

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True- and False-color imagery of Lake Erie from VIIRS data on NOAA-20, above, show a Lake largely clear of ice in mid-February (!). Cyan colors in the False-color imagery do suggest lake ice along the northern shore of Erie, however, to the east of Kingsville Ontario, and to the east of Port Stanley Ontario. The regions with ice are circled in this annotated false color image.

Clear skies meant that the Advanced Clear-Sky Processing for Ocean (ACSPO) algorithm could produce estimates of lake surface temperatures, shown below. The warmest temperatures — near 37^oF, green in the enhancement — are just northeast of Erie, PA.

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In fact, most of the Great Lakes had clear skies at 1836 UTC. Click here to see the SSTs. The mostly clear skies continued overnight on 14 February, and the image below shows ACSPO SSTs and the Day Night Band.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) include plots of Derived Motion Winds (DMW) — and showed the rapid offshore transport of cold arctic air across the southern Cook Inlet, Shelikof Strait and northwestern Gulf of Alaska on 12 February 2023. The fastest low-level (Surface – 900 hPa) DMW speed was 64 knots in the far southern portion of Cook Inlet at 2305 UTC (below).

A Heavy Freezing Spray Warning had been issued for that entire offshore region (light blue), including the Shelikof Strait (above) — and Buoy 46077 in the Shelikof Strait was recording Ice Accretion rates in excess of 1.0 inches per hour (below). Buoy air temperatures had fallen into the 10-12F range during that time, with wind gusts of 40-50 knots — providing ideal conditions for rapid ice accretion.

RCM/Radarsat-2 SAR winds at 1630 UTC on 12 February (source) are shown below — a NW-to-SE oriented swath of strong offshore winds (40-50 knots, darker shades of red) was seen extending from the far southern end of Cook Inlet (where the aforementioned 64-knot GOES-18 DMW speed was located) into the northwestern Gulf of Alaska. Another pocket of similarly-strong wind speeds was evident farther to the north, in the vicinity of Homer, Homer Spit and the mouth of Kachemak Bay.

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