GOES-16 (GOES-East) Fire Tempera ture RGB images (above) showed the rapid north-northwestward spread of a wind-driven grassland fire across Sioux County in far southern North Dakota during the early afternoon hours on 21 August 2022. South-southeasterly winds were gusting to 17-18 knots (19-21 mph) at surrounding METAR sites during that time period.

The GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB image at 1921 UTC (below) includes cursor readouts of the individual RGB components, along with the corresponding Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm (FDCA) products. This was the time of the peak 3.9 µm infrared brightness temperature of 86.95ºC — the FDCA Fire Temperature value was 758.57 K, while the Fire Power was 912.46 MW.

In Suomi-NPP VIIRS True Color and False Color RGB images valid at 1938 UTC viewed using RealEarth (below), the elongated dark vegetation burn scar was evident, along with a smoke plume fanning out to the north and a lone pyrocumulus cloud just northeast of the active fire (brighter shades of pink in the False Color image).

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The Suomi NPP satellite experienced an anomaly at ~1630 UTC on 26 July that caused all instruments to go into ‘safe mode’. NOAA Engineers have successfully re-started the instruments. The Direct Broadcast signal resumed on 11 August, and NOAA/NESDIS proclaimed VIIRS Sensor Data Record (SDR) data operational as of 18 August (information on this outage is available here). The above Day Night Band image, from RealEarth, shows Suomi NPP data from the San Juan Direct Broadcast site. The tropical Atlantic remains quiet.

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB and Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (above) showed an arc of blowing dust (along with multiple wildfire smoke plumes) moving northward across northern Argentina — behind a cold front — on 15 August 2022.

Embedded within the broad arc of blowing dust were dense plumes originating from salt flats along the northern edge of Mar Chiquita Lagoon — a closer view of those plumes is shown below.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (below) include plots of hourly surface reports — and as the cold front moved northward, surface report data (SACO | SANT | SARC | SARF | SASA | SASJ) revealed southerly wind gusts as high as 34 knots and visibility restrictions as low as 3 miles (due to blowing dust) along/behind the front.

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GOES-18 (GOES-West) True Color RGB images viewed using CSPP GeoSphere (above) showed the motion of sea ice filaments that had moved southward through the Bering Strait and into the northwestern Bering Sea (just off the coast of Chokotka Okrug, Russia) on 14 August 2022. 

A sequence of 375-meter resolution VIIRS False Color RGB images from NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP viewed using RealEarth (below) displayed a more detailed view of the sea ice (brighter shades of cyan).

A 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 False Color RGB image (below) provided an even more detailed depiction of the sea ice structure and coverage.

H/T to Rick Thoman (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), who pointed out that this sea ice was evident in the Bering Sea on 09 August. More information on this unusual sea ice event is available on this NWS SeaIce Program storymap.

https://twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1557185745265524737

===== 21 August Update =====

One week later, another sequence of VIIRS False Color RGB images from Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 on 21 August (above) indicated that the sea ice had moved a bit farther to the southwest along the Chukotka coast, with much of it located within Mechigmenskiy Zaliv due south of Lorino. 

GOES-18 True Color RGB images (below) showed the motion of this sea ice during the day.

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