GOES-17 (GOES-West) True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed the offshore transport of glacial silt across the Gulf of Alaska during the 17-18 November 2020 period. A strong pressure gradient between an inland dome of high pressure and a low pressure system off the coast of British Columbia (surface analyses) forced strong gap winds that accelerated down glacial valleys — lofting the glacial silt from the surface and carrying it off the coast. The most notable plume on both days was streaming out of the Copper River Valley.

Metop-A ASCAT surface scatterometer winds from this site (below) revealed wind speeds in the 30-40 knot range exiting the coast of the northern Alaska Panhandle at 0536 UTC on 18 November.

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EWS-G1 (Electro-optical Infrared Weather System Geostationary) is a U.S. Space Force mission. Images are now available on the UW/SSEC geo-browser. Full Disk images are obtained every 30 minutes. An EWS-G1 “quick-guide (pdf)”.

The above animation shows the 5 spectral bands on the EWS-G1 imager. There is one visible band and four infrared bands.

This multi-panel image shows all the 5 bands at one given time (and showing full disk images).

A loop of all five spectral bands.

The EWS-G1 was formerly NOAA’s GOES-13. Contact the UW/SSEC Satellite Data Services for information of data access / subscription, if more than the posted near realtime imagery are needed.

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Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided 30-second images from all 16 ABI spectral bands of GOES-16 (GOES-East) — which showed signatures of the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (carrying the Crew Dragon mission) shortly after sunset on 15 November 2020 (above). Moving rapidly northeastward was the thermal signature of air that was super-heated by the rocket exhaust, evident in all of the Near-Infrared bands (3-6) and Infrared bands (7-16) — in addition to a separate signature of the low-altitude booster rocket condensation cloud that was seen in all of the Infrared bands (drifting slowly eastward offshore, away from the launch site).

Even though a dim signature was not obvious in the Visible bands (1, 2), AWIPS cursor sampling of reflectance values from GOES-16 Bands 1, 2 and 3 at 0027 UTC (below) revealed small values (0.1%) for those two spectral bands at the location of the brightest Band 3 pixel (near the launch site).

In a zoomed-in comparison of GOES-16 Visible and Near-Infrared spectral bands (below), a special enhancement was used to enhance reflectance — obvious rocket booster signatures were apparent in the Near-Infrared bands (3-6), and a small bright pixel was even seen in the Band 2 Visible imagery during the ~1.5 minutes following the 0027 UTC launch.

A 16-panel display of all GOES-16 ABI spectral bands from 0026-0031 UTC is shown below.

A GOES-17 (GOES-West) Mesoscale Sector was also positioned over the launch area — in a comparison of 1-minute GOES-17 and 30-second GOES-16 Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (below), the rocket booster engine thermal signature was prominent during the first 2 minutes post-launch. The images are displayed in the native projection of each satellite.

Larger-scale views of Shortwave Infrared and Water Vapor images from GOES-16 and GOES-17 are shown below (credit: Tim Schmit, NOAA/NESDIS/CIMSS @GOESguy).

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Iota intensified to a Category 1 hurricane at 0600 UTC on 15 November 2020 — 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East)  “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) and Mid-level (6.9 µm) Water Vapor images (above) showed that the interior structure of the tropical cyclone improved during the day.

GOES-16 Longwave Infrared (11.2 µm) images, with contours of 02 UTC deep-layer wind shear from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below)showed that the hurricane was moving through an environment of low southwesterly shear, which favored intensification.

===== 16 November Update =====

Iota rapidly intensified to a Category 5 storm as of 15 UTC on 16 November (ADT | SATCON). 1-minute GOES-16 Visible and Infrared images from sunrise to sunset are shown above; mesovortices were seen within the eye of the hurricane. Iota had been moving over warm water having  Sea Surface Temperature values of 29-30ºC, which was favorable for intensification.

After sunset, Hurricane Iota eventually made landfall along the coast of Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm at 0340 UTC on 17 November — GOES-16 Infrared images (above) indicated an eye structure that was deteriorating and becoming more cloud-filled as the hurricane approached the coast.

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