A sequence of two intense storms in the north Pacific Ocean, noted in the GOES-17 airmass RGB below, has drawn moisture into the northwestern United States. A MIMIC (Morphed Integrated Microwave Imagery at CIMSS) Total Precipitable Water rocking animation, above (rocking animation from this site), shows the development of a ribbon of moisture that moved into the northwestern United States.

Advected Layer Precipitable Water (ALPW, from this website), differentiates the moisture into layers. At 1200 UTC, one moisture axis was right across the Bay Area of California, with 20-24 mm of moisture in the sfc-850 mb layer, 10-12 mm of moisture in the 850-700 mb layer, and 5 or 6 mm in the 700-500 mb layer.

Accumulated 1-hour precipitation (estimated with CMORPH-2) for the hour ending at 1200 UTC on 22 October, below, shows a ribbon of rain from just north of the Bay Area to central Oregon; largest amounts over northern California are 6-8 mm for the one hour. CMORPH-2 estimates of precipitation are available at RealEarth.

View only this post Read Less

Cooler temperatures across the Midwest are often heralded by thunderstorms. Yesterday evening and last night, a system brought rain and lightning to parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, moving over Ohio by Thursday morning. RealEarth, a web-based visualization platform developed at UW-Madison, can display data from GOES-16 to monitor such events. RealEarth’s data archives usually go back at least 24-hours which provides temporal context to weather events.

RealEarth is a free data discovery and visualization platform developed at SSEC/CIMSS at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is available at realearth.ssec.wisc.edu.

View only this post Read Less

Himawari-8 True Color RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

The Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea erupted around 2200 UTC on 19 October 2021. JMA Himawari-8 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed lower- to middle-altitude ash clouds (shades of tan to brown) moving westward and northward, while the main eruptive cloud — composed of a mixture of ash, SO2 and ice particles — spread out at high altitudes to the east and north. (Side note: brief flashes of sun glint off some of the island rivers were also seen.)  

Retrieved values of Ash Height from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (below) indicated that the Manam eruption cloud reached maximum altitudes within the 16-18 km range. 

Himawari-8 Ash Height [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

View only this post Read Less

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, top) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) showed the smoke plume and thermal anomaly or “hot spot” (cluster of darker black pixels) associated with what was likely a prescribed burn at or near the Brooklyn Wildlife Area in south-central Wisconsin on 19 October 2021.

A toggle between the GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared image at 2027 UTC and a background Google Maps image — as viewed using RealEarth (below) — further implicated Brooklyn Wildlife Area as the likely fire source region.

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) image at 2027 UTC, along with a Google Maps background [click to enlarge]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) offered a clearer depiction of the smoke plume, as it eventually moved northeastward over the Madison metro area.

GOES-16 True Color images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

As the smoke plume moved over the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, the aerosol layer was detected by a rooftop High Spectral Resolution Lidar — generally within the 2-4 km altitude range (below).

UW-SSEC rooftop lidar images [click to enlarge]

A few miles to the northeast, the ceilometer at Madison Dane County Regional Airport also detected the base of the smoke plume aloft (below). 

Plot of surface report data from Madison Dane County Regional Airport [click to enlarge]

Southwesterly surface wind gusts at Monroe (located about 20 miles southwest of the fire source region) were as high as 24 knots (28 mph) just before 19 UTC (below).

Plot of surface data from Monroe [click to enlarge]

Thanks to Kathy Strabala (SSEC) for bringing this case to our attention!

View only this post Read Less