The Calf Canyon fire, which began on April 19, 2022, and the Hermits Peak fire, which began on April 6, 2022, both continue to burn in northern New Mexico. (Recently posted on the CIMSS blog here and here.) The Hermits Peak fire began as a prescribed burn under what were believed to be favorable conditions. The district ranger of the Las Vegas Ranger District is quoted to have said “Our prescribed burn from last Wednesday was the cause of the Hermits Peak Fire. With that said, we take full responsibility and with a heavy heart, we are really sorry for what happened.”

The wildfires combined on April 23, 2022, but can be seen in the GOES-16 imagery below to now exist in two separate areas in western Mora and San Miguel counties.

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This NOAA/OSPO website shows regions where SAR data are available each day. SAR data can also be imported into AWIPS, as shown in the animation above, which animation has the SAR data overlain on top of GOES-17 Band 7 (Shortwave IR, 3.9 µm) data. Note that SAR winds are not valid over the land — the stronger returns over the islands are instead telling you something about the surface. (Compare this image to a Landsat image — there’s a good correlation!)

A zoomed-in version of the imagery over the ?Alenuih?h? Channel between the Big Island of Hawai’i and Maui is shown below as a toggle between the 3.9 µm and the winds. The significant funneling between the two islands is readily apparent, with winds increasing from about 15 knots northeast of the Big Island to closer to 25 knots within the channel.

A zoom-in over Maui and Molokai, below, details winds around those islands as well, with strong winds between Molokai and Lanai, and an apparent col to the lee of Maui.

Farther north, over the open Pacific to the north of the Hawai’ian Islands, SAR data shows enhancements in wind underneath structures that are apparent in the Band 7 imagery!

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Data on this website (if you click through to 5 May 2022) shows regions where the RCM constellation has produced data. There are very small footprint scenes (shown below) over the Red River of the North, where flooding is ongoing (blog post 1; blog post 2). The Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) imagery within those small footprints is shown sequentially, from south to north, above. The NRCS imagery gives very high-resolution snapshots of flooded regions. This NRCS image from 00:13:39 has the largest extent of flooding within it.

A single image that shows the 6 scenes, aligned from south to north, is available here. (Warning: It’s large)

Data were also available from earlier in May. Compare this RCM2 NRCS image from 00:29:27 on 3 May to this RCM3 NRCS image from 00:05:41 on 4 May to this RCM3 NRCS from 00:13:39 on May 5th. Flooding has expanded slightly over the two days.

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GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed these isolated thunderstorms as they moved north-northwestward up the Susitna Valley (northwest of Anchorage).

In the corresponding 1-minute GOES-17 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (below), the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of the thunderstorms were around -35ºC (darker blue enhancement).

GOES-17 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

A toggle between Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images around 2201 UTC (below) included a plot of available NUCAPS sounding points from NOAA-20.

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images and 2201 UTC [click to enlarge]

The NOAA-20 NUCAPS profile for the green (infrared + microwave) sounding point 25 miles WSW of Big Lake (below) diagnosed a surface parcel CAPE value of 616 J/kg, with a Lifted Index of -3.  

NOAA-20 NUCAPS profile for the sounding point 25 miles WSW of Big Lake [click to enlarge]

A later toggle between Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images and 2345 UTC is shown below; the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperature of the thunderstorms was -38ºC (near Big Lake), which closely corresponded to the altitude of the Equilibrium Level on the NUCAPS profile.

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images and 2345 UTC [click to enlarge]

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