As northeast Santa Ana winds began to increase before sunrise on 30 October 2019, 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed the sudden onset of a thermal anomaly (cluster of  hot 3.9 µm pixels) — associated with the Easy Fire northwest of Los Angeles — which occurred at 1308-1309 UTC (6:08-6:09 AM local time). After sunrise, the narrow wind-driven smoke plume was seen in the Visible imagery.

A comparison of 3 consecutive VIIRS Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images from Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 with the corresponding GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (below) demonstrated the advantage of polar orbiter imagery for providing a more accurate depiction of the size and location of a fire. Note: the color enhancements are different for the Suomi NPP/NOAA-20 vs GOES-17 images, since there are differences between shortwave infrared detectors on the VIIRS and ABI instruments.

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GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellite imagery can be remapped and combined to create stereoscopic imagery. To achieve the 3-dimensional effect, cross your eyes until three scenes are visible, and focus on the middle image.  You can also achieve this by placing a finger halfway between your eyes and the screen, and focusing on your finger, then focusing on the image behind.  (Here’s a website that might help).  The imagery above, from 24 October 2019, shows high clouds rotating anti-cyclonically above the smoke produced from the Kincade Fire (previous blog posts on this fire are here and here). The smoke plume extended far out into the Pacific Ocean. A Full-resolution image animation is shown below.

Animations for 25 October, 26 October, 27 October, 28 October and 29 October are shown below, in order.

On the 25th and 26th of October, prevailing winds moved smoke into the Bay Area.  On both days, the fire appeared less vigorous in the visible imagery than on the 24th, at top, or on the 27th;  at least, it appeared to be producing less smoke.

On the 27th, below, the fire resembled the scene on 24 October, with a large smoke plume extending far southwest into the Pacific Ocean.

On the 28th, below, smoke generation has decreased, and the smoke pall appears over the Bay Area again. A full-resolution version is available here.

The scene on the 29th, below (Full resolution available here) is shown below. The smoke plume is extensive.

How did the smoke plume change from day to day? The animation below shows data at 2350 UTC on 24-29 October.

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Gridded NUCAPS fields (Here’s a NASA SpoRT VLab page on the product) are now available in AWIPS, effective with AWIPS Build 19.3.1. The imagery above includes a swath of NUCAPS points (called up via ‘NUCAPS Sounding Availability’) under the Satellite Tab, and the ‘S-NPP and NOAA-20’ choice there (even though, at present, only NOAA-20 NUCAPS profiles are supplied to AWIPS). A ‘Gridded NUCAPS’ choice is available right about the NUCAPS Sounding Availability, and this allows a user to choose Temperature, Dewpoint Temperature, Equivalent Potential Temperature, Lapse Rates (and more!) at different standard mandatory pressure levels (or layers, for Lapse Rates). Interpolation in the vertical has moved the native NUCAPS pressure levels (mentioned here) to standard pressure levels.

The plot above also shows the temperature at 500 hPa for the same time, 1304 UTC.  Gridded NUCAPS fields do not cover the entire extent of the NUCAPS Sounding Availability plots.  In addition, values are present for all sounding color dot points — green, yellow and red — on the theory that a user can identify the bad data visually.

The animation below shows a series of gridded fields over northern Canada, covering much of the the Sounding Availability plot.  Because of the timestamps on these different grids, they do not all time match the swath of NUCAPS Sounding Availability points. On this day, the size of some of the fields produced was quite small.  The size of the gridded region is limited by computational resources on AWIPS, and the upper limit is 20 lines of NUCAPS soundings — 600 soundings total that are horizontally and vertically interpolated. The size is also affected by the order in which the soundings appear in AWIPS. If a small chunk (say, 7 lines of soundings) comes in, then that small chunk will be processed into a horizontal grid. It’s more common that grid sizes will be closer to what occurred at 1304 UTC.

If you look in the Product Browser on AWIPS, you will find far more data than are available under the ‘Gridded NUCAPS’ menu under ‘NOAA-20 and S-NPP’ under the satellite tab.  (Here’s just a small sample!)  For example, you can plot Ozone estimates from NUCAPS, as shown below — loaded as a grid then converted to an image.  Expect the presentation of NUCAPS horizontal fields in AWIPS to evolve with time.  In the meantime, this is a valuable data set to determine (for example) the likelihood of snow v. rain based on the 925 Temperature and Dewpoint Depression.

(Thanks to Dr. Emily Berndt, NASA SpoRT, for clarifying remarks. Any errors that remain are the author’s, however!  Imagery courtesy NWS MKX)

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed a wind-driven increase in areal coverage and smoke production from the Kincade Fire in Northern California on 27 October 2019. The fire made a rapid southwestward run of approximately 10 miles toward Highway 101 (plotted in red), as Diablo Winds increased during the nighttime hours — a wind gust of 102 mph was recorded at Pine Flat Road and 93 mph near Healdsburg Hills.

GOES-17 True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the AOS site (below) showed how Kincade Fire smoke expanded across the Pacific Ocean during the day.

A sequence of VIIRS Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images from Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 (below) showed the southwestward expansion of the large thermal anomaly associated with  the fire (Note: the NOAA-20 images are incorrectly labeled as Suomi NPP).

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