Flooding has been detected by satellite along the Red River of the North for more than a week (see this blog post from late April). The image above shows the Flood Estimates (from this website). The image below (courtesy William Straka, CIMSS) shows a high-resolution downscaled Flood-water depth map derived from VIIRS imagery only.

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An interesting aspect of this flooded land is that it affecting the boundary layer of the atmosphere, as shown below. Band 2 imagery (0.64 µm) shows lake breeze clouds developing around the lake; the Band 3 imagery (0.87 µm), farther below, better articulates the location of the land/water boundary. Dryer air moving in later in the day leads to dissipation of the clouds.

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NOAA-20 overflew this region at around 1800 UTC on 3 May 2022. The toggle below (using imagery taken from the CIMSS Direct Broadcast site for NOAA-20 located here), shows VIIRS Bands I01 through I04 (0.64 µm, 0.86 µm, 1.61 µm and 3.74 µm) at that time. The lake-breeze clouds are very apparent, and the cold waters of the lake are also obvious in the I04 imagery.

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Thanks to Carl Jones, WFO FGF, for drawing attention to the lake breezes!

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RealEarth recently added Full Disk versions of IFR Probability and Low IFR Probability products for both GOES East (GOES-16) and GOES West (GOES-17). The animation above shows the simple way to display them: go to the RealEarth site (link), and enter ‘IFR Probability’ into the Search Tool, then drag the GOES-16 or GOES-17 thumbnail onto the globe. GOES-16 and GOES-17 Full Disk imagery typically has a 10-minute cadence. Did you notice in the GOES-17 Full Disk image the signal over the big island of Hawai’i? That’s also shown below, toggling with the GOES-17 ‘Clean Window’ Infrared (10.3 µm) Band 13 image. IFR Probability is highest along the slopes of Hawai’i’s volcanoes; IFR Probability computation does have knowledge of terrain height.

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CSPP Geosphere is a GOES-16 visualization website that uses Cloud Computing (and CSPPGeo software) to create imagery. The animation above shows the Night Microphysics RGB over the central United States starting at 0856 UTC and extending 12 frames (as noted in the saved mp4 filename). The animation above uses a more accurate definition of the Night Microphysics RGB; you can tell the difference in temperature in the low clouds between the cold stratus (yellow enhancement) over the Midwest and the warmer clouds (closer to blue/cyan) over the southern Plains and over North Carolina. Note that there are also low clouds over Alabama under the high clouds; perhaps IFR Probability fields (available in RealEarth) over that state are a more logical choice to define low clouds there.

The new CSPP Geosphere site — being tested now at CIMSS — includes GOES-17 data (and will include GOES-18 data when available, as GOES-18 support is currently being added to CSPP Geo software). Thus, one can create imagery over the Pacific Ocean including Hawaii.

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The new Geosphere site should be available in Summer 2022.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images along with 5-minute Fire Temperature images (above) showed intensification of 3 portions of the combined Calf Canyon Fire and Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico on 01 May 2022. Active fire behavior was aided by surface winds gusts in the 45-54 mph range and very dry air within the boundary layer; these large fires also burned very hot, with 3.9 µm Shortwave Infrared brightness temperatures reaching 138.71ºC — the saturation temperature of ABI Band 7 detectors. Coldest 10.35 µm cloud-top brightness temperatures of intermittent pyroCumulus clouds were around -37ºC (darker yellow enhancement). The Fire Temperature derived product is a component of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA.

However, in a comparison of 375-meter resolution NOAA-20 VIIRS True Color RGB, Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images valid at 2026 UTC — downloaded and processed using the SSEC/CIMSS Direct Broadcast ground station (below), a small cluster of cloud-top 11.45 µm brightness temperatures of -40 to -43.6ºC (red enhancement) indicated that this feature met the criteria for classification as a pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

The Calf Canyon Fire previously generated a pyroCb cloud on 22 April.

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