An F5 tornado struck the village of Oakfield, Wisconsin late in the day on 18 July 1996 (NWS Milwaukee story). An animation of GOES-8 (GOES-East) Visible images (below) showed the development of supercell thunderstorms as they moved east-southeastward across the area. Oakfield is located just southwest of Fond du Lac (KFLD), and is denoted by the yellow ‘+’ symbol on the images. Overshooting tops were evident on these thunderstorms.

The corresponding GOES-8 Infrared Window images (below) revealed cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures as cold as -63.6ºC (darker shades of red) at 2345 UTC, which was approximately 30 minutes prior to the tornado moving through Oakfield (the GOES-8 imager instrument was actually scanning the Oakfield area at 2348 UTC).

On a larger-scale view of GOES-8 Water Vapor images (below), a sharp gradient of warm-to-cool brightness temperature — orange/yellow to blue enhancement, portraying the gradient of dry air to moist air — highlighted the presence of a middle-tropospheric jet streak that was moving southeastward across the state.

Examples of Derived Product Images from the GOES-8 Sounder can be seen here.

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Lightning safety is important for aircraft, mariners, and many outdoor activities. CIMSS is working to evaluate a model that nowcasts lightning. This model was trained using GOES-16 ABI visible, near-infrared, and long-wave infrared channels, as well as GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) observations. It predicts the probability of lightning (IC or CG, as observed by GLM) in the next 60 minutes at any given point. The model routinely provides lead-time to lightning initiation of 20 minutes or more. We’re hopeful that one day such a model will help forecasters provide guidance for aviators, mariners, and decision support services (DSS) for things like sporting events, festivals, and theme parks. Near-real-time model output can be viewed using SSEC’s RealEarth.

Below are a few examples, with the forecast lightning probability contoured over the daytime cloud phase RGB and GOES-16 GLM flash-extent density.

So this summer, whether you’re going to the South Carolina beach,

or sailing in the Gulf of Maine,

or hiking in the Rocky Mountains,

or catching the first MLB game in Iowa,

be on the lookout for lightning!

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) and Fire Temperature RGB images (above) revealed that the Bootleg Fire in far southern Oregon produced a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud — denoted by cloud-top 10.35 µm infrared brightness temperatures of -40ºC and colder (darker blue pixels) — late in the day on 14 July 2021. The maximum surface 3.9 µm brightness temperature sensed with this fire was 138.7ºC — which is the saturation temperature for the ABI Band 7 detectors.

A plot of 00 UTC rawinsonde data from nearby Medford, Oregon (below) indicated that the -40ºC temperature closely corresponded to the height of the tropopause and the Most Unstable (MU) air parcel Equilibrium Level (EL).

On the following morning, signatures of the upper-tropospheric/lower-stratospheric smoke that was forced aloft by the pyroCb cloud could be seen arcing east-southeastward over parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming on GOES-17 Visible and Near-Infrared “Cirrus” (1.37 µm) images (below). The smoke signature in 1.37 µm images was not due to the plume being composed of ice particles; rather, the Cirrus imagery is also able to highlight the presence of particles that are highly effective at scattering sunlight (which includes ice crystals, dust, volcanic ash, smoke) — and the smoke signature was also further highlighted by a favorable forward scattering angle.

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A sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) and Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed snapshots of thunderstorms over parts of the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast of Alaska on 12 July 2021. The coldest convective cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were in the -30 to -40ºC range. Unusual aspects of these thunderstorms included their high latitude location over ice-covered waters — as far north as 75ºN latitude — and the large amount of cloud-to-surface lightning strikes that they produced.

There were 6 lightning strikes in Alaska today, and 159 over the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea. #akwx @AlaskaWx pic.twitter.com/PL8i17gR3Z

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) July 13, 2021

Update on thunderstorms rumbling across across the Chukchi & Beaufort Seas on July 12. All this is occurring over high concentration sea ice as unstable air from Siberia is pushed eastward by a deep storm center farther north. #akwx #Arctic #lightning @Climatologist49 pic.twitter.com/8Ef78IOJRF

— Rick Thoman (@AlaskaWx) July 13, 2021

These thunderstorms were not surface-based — instead, they were forced by an approaching cold front (surface analyses) which helped to release elevated instability within the 500-300 hPa layer (below).

Rawinsonde data from Utqiagvik (PABR) were not available (due to ongoing equipment malfunction at that site) — but a NUCAPS profile near the southernmost cluster of convection around 15 UTC (below) showed the layer of instability aloft.

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