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

GOES-17 MVFR Probability over the PACUS Sector [click to play animation]

The suite of Fog/Low Stratus (FLS) products derived using GOES-17 (GOES-West) data within the PACUS Sector (above) became available via the Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) for AWIPS on 18 October 2021. Two examples are shown below: one centered over Oregon, and the other centered over the Big Island of Hawai’i. The 4 products are Marginal Visual Flight Rules (MVFR, cloud ceiling 1000 to 3000 feet above ground level and/or visibility 3 to 5 miles) Probability, Instrument Flight Rules (IFR, cloud ceiling 500 feet to less than 1000 feet and/or visibility 1 to less than 3 miles) Probability, Low Instrument Flight Rules (LIFR, cloud ceiling less than 500 feet and/or visibility less than 1 mile) Probability and Cloud Thickness. 

GOES-17 MVFR Probability (top left), IFR Probability (top right), Low IFR Probability (bottom left) and Low Cloud Thickness (bottom right) [click to play animation]

GOES-17 MVFR Probability (top left), IFR Probability (top right), Low IFR Probability (bottom left) and Low Cloud Thickness (bottom right) [click to play animation] 

GOES-17 FLS products are also being produced by CIMSS over the Alaska region (below) — which are being distributed via an LDM feed.

GOES-17 MVFR Probability (top left), IFR Probability (top right), Low IFR Probability (bottom left) and Low Cloud Thickness (bottom right) [click to play animation]

A library of FLS applications can be found on the GOES-R Fog Product Examples site, and FLS Forecaster Training is available here.

View only this post Read Less