GOES-19, scheduled to become the operational GOES-East satellite on 4 April (Friday morning) no earlier than 7 April (updated on 3 April because of a Critical Weather Day), is now on station at 75.2^oW and broadcasting data. GOES-16, to be replaced, has been shifted slightly westward; data from both satellites are remapped to a grid centered at 75^oW. The comparion above shows the airmass RGB (computed using geo2grid and its underlying Satpy libraries). The two products are similar enough to be nearly indistinguishable. Scientists at CIMSS (and elsewhere) are working to make certain that the switch to GOES-19 is seamless.

The toggle below compares LightningCast probability contours on top of a Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB — created using the CSPP Geo LightningCast software — for GOES-16 and GOES-19; the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB imagery is very similar and the LightningCast contours are largely the same.

View only this post Read Less

Darker shades of red in GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Snow-Fog RGB images on 31 March 2025 (above) highlighted areas in eastern/northeastern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that received an accrual of ice (from sleet and/or freezing rain/drizzle) as a late-season winter storm moved across the region during the previous 2 days. In the RGB images — created using Geo2Grid — snow-covered ground appeared as brighter shades of red, with bare ground exhibiting shades of green; clouds appeared as shades of white to pale yellow/green (depending on the cloud-top phase).

A sequence of GOES-16 Visible and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images is shown below — areas that received significant ice accretion exhibited darker shades of black in the Snow/Ice images. The highest ice accretion amounts in northern Wisconsin were 0.50″ in Forest and Oconto County, with 0.50″ also reported in Delta County in the UP of Michigan.

On the following day, clouds had cleared enough across the eastern UP of Michigan and northern Lower Michigan to reveal a darker-red Day Snow-Fog RGB signature of the areal coverage of ice accrual in those areas (below).

In a toggle between GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB and True Color RGB images (below), in northern Lower Michigan note the lack of a brighter white True Color appearance along the southern edge of the strong (darker red) Day Snow-Fog ice accrual signature — a layer of ice on the ground with no snow cover is generally translucent.

A sequence of GOES-16 Visible and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images is shown below — areas that received significant ice accretion exhibited darker shades of black in the Snow/Ice images. The highest ice accretion amounts in northern Lower Michigan were 1.50″ in Oconto County, 0.76″ in Presque Isle County and 0.75″ in Oscoda County.

View only this post Read Less

The east coast of the United States, Atlantic Canada, Greenland and Iceland were in the path of a solar eclipse at/shortly after sunrise on 29 March 2025, as shown in the visible imagery animation above (direct link to animation here) downloaded from the CSPP Geosphere site. Much of the region was cloudy this morning, so viewing the Sun at/near sunrise was a challenge unless you were in northern Maine or New Brunswick.

The next Solar Eclipse will be on September 21 2025, in the southern Hemisphere.

View only this post Read Less

A strong solar flare occurred on 28 March 2025, peaking around 1520 UTC. A vivid signature of this event was captured by the GOES-16 (GOES-East) SUVI instrument (above). Real-time SUVI images are available at the SSEC Geostationary Satellite Imagery site.

A screen capture of the bulletin from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center is shown below.

View only this post Read Less