The incipient circulation of Cyclone Seroja moved very slowly across the island of Timor in Indonesia during the 03 April – 04 April 2021 period — and the MIMIC Total Precipitable Water product (above) depicted very high values over that area (just northwest of Australia).

At Kupang’s El Tari Airport, precipitation amounts included 547 mm (21.5 inches) during the 48 hours ending at 00 UTC on 05 April — with the heaviest amounts of 106 mm (4.2 inches) in 6 hours and 80 mm (3.1 inches) in 3 hours occurring during the 00-06 UTC period on 04 April when the pressure was falling as Cyclone Seroja began to slowly organize and intensify (below). Flash flooding affected much of the island, with multiple deaths being reported.

JMA 2.5-minute interval rapid scan Himawari-8 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images (below) revealed a few convective bursts — with cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -90ºC and colder (yellow pixels embedded within darker shades of purple) — in the vicinity of Kupang (station identifier WATT) between 04 UTC on 04 April and 00 UTC on 05 April.

A NOAA-20 VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) image at 0550 UTC visualized using RealEarth (below) showed one lone -90ºC pixel within a convective burst centered just north of Kupang.

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CMORPH estimates of 7-day precipitation (available in RealEarth) over the region show 300-400 mm over West Timor, and values exceeding 700 mm (!!) over the adjacent ocean.

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Every Spring season, many states conduct prescribed burns as a part of land management within forests, parks, wetlands etc — and GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed a large number of smoke plumes associated with prescribed burning across parts of the central US on 02 April 2021.

Of particular interest was a very long smoke plume that was seen streaming northward across southern Lake Michigan — a closer view using GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over that area (below) indicated that 2 separate plumes merged into one larger/longer smoke plume that continued to drift north-northeastward toward the west coast of Lower Michigan. The source of these smoke plumes was the combination of a small prescribed burn and a larger wildfire within the Indiana Dunes National Park near the coast of Lake Michigan.

375-meter resolution Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images (below) provided a more detailed view of the smoke plume over far southern Lake Michigan, as well as thermal anomalies (clusters of hot pixels) associated with the industrial sites producing the smoke.

The pair of 1-minute GOES-16 Mesoscale Domain Sectors was positioned to cover the northern and southern portions of the central US  — and a small overlap of the sectors provided 30-second imagery over the Nebraska/Kansas border area. 30-second GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB images (below) offered a qualitative view of the locations and relative intensities of a few prescribed burns in the southwestern portion of Nebraska.

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) showed the thermal anomaly (cluster of darker red pixels) associated with a fire at a metal recycling plant in La Crosse, Wisconsin — located at the center of the images — on 02 April 2021. According to media reports, over 100 vehicles were burning at the facility. Farther to the south, a few thermal signatures of prescribed burns were seen in northeastern Iowa.

A brief smoke plume was produced by the recycling center fire, as shown in GOES-16 True Color RGB images (below), which drifted north-northeastward. Smoke plumes from the prescribed burns were also evident.

A time series plot of surface weather conditions at La Crosse Regional Airport (below) showed the strong southerly winds gusting to 27 knots around the time of the fire, which transported the smoke plumes northward.

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VIIRS data from the ascending NOAA-20 overpass on 2 April 2021 — with data downloaded at the Direct Broadcast site at UW-Madison — showed predominantly clear skies over the Great Lakes.  Lake ice is confined to bays on the north shore of Lake Superior, and a hint of green appears over southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern Ohio.  A larger version of this image is available here, for about a week.  VIIRS imagery is routinely available from all recent overpasses and can be viewed here.

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