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GOES-17 HBT Flush

By Scott Bachmeier •

Approximately once every 239 days, a HBT (Hydrazine Bipropellant Thruster) Flush is performed on GOES-R series satellites — this flushing burn limits the build-up of ferric nitrate in the HBT valves. Following a GOES-17 (GOES-West) HBT Flush that was conducted on 10 July 2019, a navigation offset of about 145... Read More

GOES-17 "Red Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 “Red Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

Approximately once every 239 days, a HBT (Hydrazine Bipropellant Thruster) Flush is performed on GOES-R series satellites — this flushing burn limits the build-up of ferric nitrate in the HBT valves. Following a GOES-17 (GOES-West) HBT Flush that was conducted on 10 July 2019, a navigation offset of about 145 km was seen in 3 consecutive PACUS sector scans and in 2 consecutive Full Disk scans (immediately after the 10-minute image outage during the flush procedure) — a 5-minute PACUS sector view of Baja California using “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images is shown above, and a 10-minute Full Disk sector view of thermal anomalies associated with wildfires in Alaska using Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images is shown below.

GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

Additional information on the HBT can be found in the GOES-R Series Data Book.

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Jet skier stranded by fog in Lake Superior

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed narrow ribbons of fog over the northwestern portion of Lake Superior on 08 July 2019. A person attempting to navigate from Grand Portage, Minnesota — located northeast of Grand Marais Airport, identifier KCKC — to Isle Royale became lost in the fog and eventually... Read More

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed narrow ribbons of fog over the northwestern portion of Lake Superior on 08 July 2019. A person attempting to navigate from Grand Portage, Minnesota — located northeast of Grand Marais Airport, identifier KCKC — to Isle Royale became lost in the fog and eventually ran out of fuel (media story).

Possibly compounding the fog-related visibility problem, GOES-16 Natural Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (below) revealed that dense smoke from Canadian wildfires was lingering and also recirculating slowly northward across Lake Superior; this smoke occasionally reduced the surface visibility to 4 miles at Houghton, Michigan (identifier KCMX).

GOES-16 Natural Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 Natural Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

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Canadian wildfire smoke across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the AOS site (above) showed the signature of dense smoke from Canadian wildfires that was being transported southward across parts of the Upper Midwest on 06 July 2019. While much of the smoke remained aloft, some of it was reaching the surface... Read More

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the AOS site (above) showed the signature of dense smoke from Canadian wildfires that was being transported southward across parts of the Upper Midwest on 06 July 2019. While much of the smoke remained aloft, some of it was reaching the surface and restricting the visibility at locations such as International Falls, Baudette and Thief River Falls in northern Minnesota and Fargo in eastern North Dakota.

On the following day, the smoke settled farther southward over Wisconsin and Michigan (below). Much of the smoke again remained aloft, but continued to persist within the boundary layer at Baudette and International Falls — and it did briefly restrict the surface visibility at Green Bay in northeastern Wisconsin.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

===== 08 July Update =====

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

On 08 July the smoke covered much of the Great Lakes and parts of adjacent states (above).

===== 09 July Update =====

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

On 09 July, a gradual decreasing trend in the areal coverage and density of smoke over the Great Lakes was seen (above). A Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB image acquired and processed by the CIMSS/SSEC Direct Broadcast ground station (below) showed that some of the smoke had moved over the Mid-Atlantic states and out across the adjacent offshore waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB image [click to enlarge]

Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB image [click to enlarge]

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Fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Kentucky

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm), Near-Infrared “Cloud Particle Size” (2.24 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed nighttime thermal signatures of a fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Versailles, Kentucky on 03 July 2019. The fire reportedly began to burn around 0330 UTC (11:30 PM... Read More

GOES-16 Near-Infrared

GOES-16 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm, left), Near-Infrared “Cloud Particle Size” (2.24 µm, center) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, right) images – GLM Groups are plotted in red on the 3.9 µm images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm), Near-Infrared “Cloud Particle Size” (2.24 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed nighttime thermal signatures of a fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Versailles, Kentucky on 03 July 2019. The fire reportedly began to burn around 0330 UTC (11:30 PM EDT on 02 July); it was thought that the fire may have been started by a lightning strike — and GOES-16 GLM Groups did indeed portray lightning activity associated with thunderstorms that were dissipating over the area around that time.

The nighttime thermal signatures seen on near-infrared 1.61 µm and 2.24 µm images (brighter white pixels) result from the fact that those two ABI spectral bands are located close to the peak emitted radiance of very hot features such as volcanic eruptions or large fires (below).

Plots of Spectral Response Functions for ABI Bands 5, 6 and 7 [click to enlarge]

Plots of Spectral Response Functions for ABI Bands 5, 6 and 7 [click to enlarge]

The fire continued burning during the day — although it was frequently cloudy, the hot 3.9 µm thermal signature (darker red pixels) was apparent through occasional breaks in the cloud cover (below).

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation]

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation]

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