Ice coverage on Lake Superior has reached a seasonal peak. The image above shows VIIRS true-color imagery from Suomi-NPP (taken from the VIIRS Today website). Mostly clear skies over most of Superior on 14 March allowed for better estimates of ice cover on that day from VIIRS (more clouds were present on 15 March).

Ice-cover mapping from NOAA’s GLERL (The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory), shown below (from this website) also shows extensive ice cover over Lake Superior. (Blue regions indicate open water.)

The analysis below (also from the GLERL site, at this link) shows how the ice cover has varied over the course of the winter over Superior. The present maximum is the largest ice extent of the season — and the ice cover is greater than normal. Ice cover over Superior typically peaks in early March.

When clouds are present (and when they are not!), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery (available in near-real time at this website) gives very high-resolution information about ice formation on Lakes. The image below shows the Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) from 15 March 2022 just before 1200 UTC. Open water is indicated (flat black surfaces) just east of the Keewenaw Peninsula, just east of Isle Royale, in a strip along the western shore of the lake, and in a large region in central Lake Superior to the east of the tip of the Keewenaw Peninsula.

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NOAA/STAR does have a Great-Lakes specific SAR website that includes imagery mapped to all 5 Great Lakes. (Link). The mp4 animation below, using images from that website, shows the 11 most recent Lake Superior images of NRCS, ending at ca. 1200 UTC on 15 March. A lot of the views include Duluth Harbor.

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images along with a Turbulence Probability product (above) showed the formation of a banner cloud in northwestern Montana on 14 March 2022 — this orographic cloud feature appeared to be anchored to the Lewis Range and Sawtooth Range, which rise to elevations of 8,000-9,000 feet. The Probability of Moderate or Greater (MOG) Turbulence correctly peaked at values of 70-80% during the course of the day in the general vicinity of the banner cloud — including around the time of a pilot report of Moderate Turbulence at 38,000 feet at 1341 UTC.

A GOES-16 Cloud Top Height derived product (below) indicated that the banner cloud tops were in the 37,000-40,000 feet range (darker blue enhancement) — the altitude of many pilot reports of turbulence that day.

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On March 14, 2022 NOAA‘s GOES-T becoming GOES-18 (once the satellite obtained the geostationary orbit). Let’s celebrate both pi day and GOES-18 with a look back at the launch.

GOES-17 ABI

GOES-17 ABI provided 30-sec imagery, as shown in these blog posts by Scott Bachmeier and Bill Line. Of course GOES-17 ABI was continuing to provide Contiguous US and Full Disk scans.

The above image is *highly* sub-sampled, roam around this full resolution (very large) GOES-17 full disk image. In this full resolution image, can you zoom and roam to see the GOES-T rocket plume?

The above loop, as mp4 and animated gif.

GOES-16 ABI

A few animations from 30-sec GOES-16 ABI, including ABI band 2, CIMSS true color, true color and the day-time ‘rocket plume’ RGB.

The mp4 is also posted (and animated gif). These loops were made with the UW-SSEC geo2grid software.

Figure from the GOES-R series Data Book on the concept of obtaining the geostationary orbit.

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Strong surface tradewinds over Guam, and the dry season over Guam, combined on 14 March to allow short-lived wildfires. The shortwave-infrared imagery above, color-enhanced so white pixels are warmest, shows occasional flare-ups over the southern half of the island between 2200 and 0400 UTC, and then again closer to 0600 UTC over central Guam (Note also how the island warms up — becomes whiter in the color enhancement used — during the day).

How strong were the surface winds that fanned the flames? ASCAT imagery from Metop-B, shown below at (shown during the day with visible imagery) shows surface winds around 15-20 knots.

Sequential visible images can also be used to estimate wind speeds. The toggle below shows visible imagery between 0310 and 0320 UTC on 14 March. The cloud line over southern Guam moving west-southwestward towards the surrounding ocean moves about 4 nautical miles in the 10 minutes: at about 25 knots (latitude/longitude point distance separation can be computed here).

The strong winds allowed for occasional flareups. Consider the animation below between 0610 and 0630 UTC of the shortwave infrared (3.89 µm) imagery. An obvious hot spot (in white) is present at 0610 and 0620 UTC, but at 0630 UTC it has either been extinguished, or it’s been covered by clouds (or both!)

Himawari-8 Level 2 products diagnose fire hot spots, and are available from this website. A hotspot is diagnosed at 0600, 0610 and 0620 UTC on 14 March (no hotspot was diagnosed at 0630 UTC). Work is ongoing to get this level 2 Product (and others, such as derived motion wind vectors) into AWIPS.

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AWIPS imagery in this post was created using the NOAA/NESDIS TOWR-S AWIPS in the cloud instance.

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Brandon Bukunt, WFO GUM, supplied the VIIRS shortwave infrared (3.74 µm) imagery (from data downloaded from the Direct Broadcast antenna at the office, and processed with CSPP Software) below. Three wildfires are circled. Note the brightness temperature of 63 C over southern Guam!

The photograph below (courtesy Eric Lau) from a plane landing at Guam shows fires burning.

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