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The radar at NWS Grand Junction, Colorado (KGJT) was down for scheduled maintenance in late June 2022 — and on 23 June, overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above), which showed the development of thunderstorms across a portion of their County Warning Area (which includes eastern Utah and western Colorado)... Read More
GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with plots of hourly surface reports [click to play animated GIF | MP4]
The radar at NWS Grand Junction, Colorado (KGJT) was down for scheduled maintenance in late June 2022 — and on 23 June, overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above), which showed the development of thunderstorms across a portion of their County Warning Area (which includes eastern Utah and western Colorado) to help fill their gap in radar coverage. These particular storms did not reach severe levels, but some produced small hail, strong winds and heavy rainfall (Local Storm Reports).
GOES-18 images in this blog post are preliminary and non-operational GOES-18 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed smoke from Alaskan wildfires that had been transported southward over Kodiak Island and the northern Gulf of Alaska. Most of this smoke remained aloft — note that although Kodiak began... Read More
GOES-18 True Color RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]
GOES-18 images in this blog post are preliminary and non-operational
GOES-18 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid(above) showed smoke from Alaskan wildfires that had been transported southward over Kodiak Island and the northern Gulf of Alaska. Most of this smoke remained aloft — note that although Kodiak began reporting smoke late in the day, the surface visibility remained at 10 miles (below).
Plot of surface report data from Kodiak, Alaska [click to enlarge]
A composite of VIIRS True Color imagery (below) showed the location of active fires over Alaska on that day.
Composite of VIIRS True Color imagery, with fire thermal signatures shown in red [click to enlarge]
Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed a variety of Beaufort Sea ice floe motion within the nearshore waters of Alaska and Yukon during the 20-21 June 2022 period. Just north of Utqiavik (or Barrow, PABR), a sharp “shear line” was seen on 20 June — with a narrow... Read More
Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]
Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed a variety of Beaufort Sea ice floe motion within the nearshore waters of Alaska and Yukon during the 20-21 June 2022 period. Just north of Utqiavik (or Barrow, PABR), a sharp “shear line” was seen on 20 June — with a narrow line of ice flows moving east-northeastward, directly adjacent to the the pack ice that was moving westward.
Farther to the east (in the bottom right corner of this satellite scene), a fracture in the fast ice off the Yukon coastline led to the separation of a large ice floe on 21 June — which then drifted west-northwestward. Of note were the unusually warm surface air temperatures at stations near/along the northern coastline of Yukon, with some temperature readings rising into the upper 50s and low 60s F.
Gridded NUCAPS data, available from NOAA-20 data within AWIPS, can be used to construct cross-sections in AWIPS. The image above includes an editable baseline J-J’ (one of 10 different lines that can be used for data in AWIPS) from Minnesota into Indiana, roughly perpendicular to a line of broken cumulus... Read More
NOAA-20 Day Night Band visible imagery (0.70) along with NUCAPS Sounding Availability points, ca. 19z on 21 June 2022 (Click to enlarge)
Gridded NUCAPS data, available from NOAA-20 data within AWIPS, can be used to construct cross-sections in AWIPS. The image above includes an editable baseline J-J’ (one of 10 different lines that can be used for data in AWIPS) from Minnesota into Indiana, roughly perpendicular to a line of broken cumulus over Wisconsin and Iowa.
Equivalent Potential Temperature along line J-J’ as indicated in imagery above (Click to enlarge)
The cross section of equivalent potential temperature, above, shows very warm temperatures over the southern portions of the cross section, with theta-e values around 350 K. Potential Instability, i.e., theta-e values decreasing with height, is widespread along the cross-section. The broken cloud field in the VIIRS imagery on top eventually did initiate convection, as shown in this radar capture from 0012 UTC on 22 June.
How do you create the cross-sections in AWIPS? Use the Volume Browser, as shown in the screen capture below. Select ‘Cross Section’ (vs. ‘Plan view’, for example) from the choices in the Volume Browser right next to ‘File’, ‘Edit’ and ‘Tools’, then choose ‘GriddedNUCAPS’ under ‘Sources’, and choose the correct Plane — as one of the Specified Lines you have previously moved in AWIPS; then choose the variable (possibilities are shown in the image; I chose Equiv Pot Temp).
Volume Browser presentation while creating Cross-Sections using gridded NUCAPS data (Click to enlarge)
Imagery in this blog was created using a cloud instance of AWIPS from the TOWR-S group within NOAA/NWS. Thank you!
