A cloud band passing through the upper midwest on 1 May 2020, shown above in the GOES-16 ABI Visible and Infrared imagery (toggled with NUCAPS products and radar), was accompanied by radar echoes. Would you expect that radar-indicated precipitation to reach the ground?  Gridded NUCAPS fields (shown here with NUCAPS Sounding availability points) show very dry air in the lower troposphere over eastern Wisconsin.  Individual NUCAPS soundings, one over Lake Michigan just east of Racine, and one over Green Bay, toggled below, similarly show very dry air.

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Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images at 30-second intervals (above) — which showed thunderstorms that produced large hail and damaging winds across parts of southern Idaho (SPC Storm Reports) on 30 April 2020.

To the south, strong winds at the surface were lofting plumes of blowing dust from Carson Sink in western Nevada and from the Martin Fire burn scar in northern Nevada — GOES-17 Dust Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (below) displayed these dust plumes as brighter shades of pink. The Carson Sink plume eventually moved across Interstate 80 in north-central Nevada, while the fire burn scar plume eventually moved over Interstate 84 in southern Idaho.

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed sea ice features off the southeast coast of Greenland on 30 April 2020. The ice structures were deformed by northerly winds behind a weak disturbance that was moving southward farther offshore.

Thanks to Antonio Vecoli for alerting us to thee interesting ice formations.

Sea Ice swirls decorating eastern coast of #Greenland as seen yesterday by @CopernicusEU #Sentinel3 #OLCI #seaice @ESA_EO @Oceanjournal @PlymouthMarine @esa_cryosat @craigdonlon @greenlandicesmb @MartinStendel @stracma @AnnaPhoebe @PhilipSime @Steven_Ramage @GEOSEC2025 pic.twitter.com/AfoNOjtXwm

— antonio vecoli (@tonyveco) May 1, 2020

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Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images at 30-second intervals (above) — which showed rapidly-developing thunderstorms over northeastern Oklahoma, southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri on 28 April 2020. These storms developed along and ahead of an approaching cold front, and produced large hail and damaging winds (SPC Storm Reports).

The corresponding 30-second GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images are shown below.

NOAA-20 Gridded NUCAPS fields of Most-Unstable CAPE at 1927 UTC (below) indicated that an axis of high instability existed along the Kansas/Missouri border shortly preceding convective initiation.

Within that axis of instability along the Kansas/Missouri border, the NUCAPS profile for the green (using both Infrared and Microwave retrievals) sounding point in far eastern Kansas (located northeast of Chanute, station identifier KCNU) is shown above —  for the Most Unstable air parcel, calculated CAPE was 3714 J/kg, with a Lifted Index of -12ºC.

Farther to the south, the NUCAPS profile for the yellow (using only Microwave retrievals) sounding point (located east-southeast of KCNU) is shown below — for the Most Unstable air parcel, calculated CAPE was 3714 J/kg, with a Lifted Index of -14ºC.

The closest rawinsonde report (in terms of time and distance) was from Springfield in southwestern Missouri at 18 UTC (below) — it indicated Most Unstable CAPE and Lifted Index values of 3060 J/kg and -6ºC, respectively. The later availability of NUCAPS soundings closer to the region of convective initiation revealed the rapid atmospheric destabilization that allowed for explosive development of the severe thunderstorms as seen on GOES-16 imagery.

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