GOES-16 (GOES-East) Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (above) showed a variety of precipitation types as a strong cold front moved slowly eastward across the Upper Midwest during the 02 April – 03 April 2020 period — including thundersnow snow at Aberdeen, South Dakota and Oakes, North Dakota (at 18 UTC on 02 April) and freezing rain at a few sites in northern Iowa, the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota.

On the following day, in a comparison of GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and Day Snow Fog Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (below), the RGB images revealed darker red swaths across southeastern South Dakota, northwestern Iowa and western Minnesota (at the 1.61 µm wavelength, ice absorbs radiation more strongly than snow — which contributed to the darker appearance of those swaths). Note that these ice accrual swaths exhibited no signature in the Visible imagery.

Props to Carl Jones (NWS Grand Forks) for pointing this feature out.

Dark red swath extending through Minnesota is #ice accretion from April 2-3 winter storm. Strong infrared absorption in the 1.61 component of the Day Snow-Fog RGB makes it darker compared to snow. Clearly shows where ice accretion occurred whereas visible cannot. #ndwx #mnwx pic.twitter.com/L1rs7EskLa

— Carl Jones (@northflwx) April 4, 2020

View only this post Read Less

A sequence of GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Air Mass Red-Green-Blue (RGB) mages (above) showed an occluding Hurricane Force low pressure system (surface analyses) off the US East Coast on 01 April 2020. In the Air Mass RGB images, darker red areas just south of the storm center indicated the presence of higher amounts of total column ozone, brought about by a lowering tropopause — RAP40 model fields of the PV1.5 pressure (representing the height of the “dynamic tropopause”) suggested that the tropopause had descended below the 500 hPa pressure level later in the day.

The hurricane-force winds at the surface were creating seas as high as 33 feet. The milky/hazy signature of a highly-agitated sea surface + sea spray — immediately south of the convection around the core of the storm — was evident in GOES-16 True Color RGB images, created using Geo2Grid (below).

GOES-16 Visible images with an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density (below) revealed that lightning activity gradually decreased within convection surrounding the core of the low during the day.

As the storm was becoming organized near the Southeast US coast during the preceding overnight hours, a toggle between Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images at 0627 UTC (below) showed widespread mesospheric airglow waves (reference) in the Day/Night Band, propagating across the western Atlantic Ocean — these waves were likely generated by the approach of an upper-tropospheric jet streak. Note that the wave features were not apparent in the corresponding VIIRS Infrared image.

Addition information about this event is available on the Satellite Liaison Blog.

View only this post Read Less

A very large iceberg broke off the Larsen-C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in July 2017 (recall this CIMSS Satellite Blog post). While NOAA’s GOES-16 ABI visible sensors may not be ideal, they can monitor the iceberg’s location if the cloud cover is not too thick. The animation above shows the first 31 days of 2020, with just one image per day. More information from the National Ice Center.

H/T to @annamaria_84 for this tweet using Sentinel3 images:

 

The drift of A68 #iceberg, #Antarctica ?? continues.
Images acquired by #Sentinel3 between December 2019 – March2020

cc @sentinel_hub @CopernicusEU @Antarcticacl pic.twitter.com/Ahe7tDS0n8

— Annamaria Luongo (@annamaria_84) March 30, 2020

———–Update————————————-

Here’s a similar loop (mp4), but showing hourly GOES-16 “natural color” (composite) imagery, click to play animation:

View only this post Read Less

A sequence of GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Near-Infrared “Cirrus” (1.37 µm), Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm), Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm), Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) and Day Cloud Phase Distinction Red-Green-Blue (RGB)  images (above) showed both circular and linear contrails over southern Wisconsin on 31 March 2020. The circular contrail was likely created by military aircraft (Wisconsin Air National Guard) performing training operations.

A toggle between GOES-16 Visible and Cirrus images at 1601 UTC (below) indicated that the darker signature seen in Visible imagery was actually the shadow from the high-altitude contrails being cast upon the top of the low-level stratus clouds.

Another feature of interest was revealed by 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 Visible images — a mesovortex that was moving southwestward from southwest Michigan across northwestern Indiana (below). However, the small-scale circulation of the vortex was not captured by 1-minute GOES-16 Derived Motion Winds.

View only this post Read Less