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).

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).

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A total solar eclipse occurred across the southern Pacific Ocean and parts of South America on 02 July 2019 — GOES-17 (GOES-West) “stretched” True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (above) showed the eastward progression of the eclipse shadow.

On the view from GOES-16 (GOES-East), the eclipse shadow can be seen beginning to move across South America just before sunset (below). Grayscale GOES-16 Infrared imagery is displayed where there is not enough (or there is no) sunlight to use any of the ABI Visible and Near-Infrared spectral bands for RGB imagery.

Full Disk GOES-17 and GOES-16 True Color RGB imagery combined and displayed in a Mollweide projection is shown below (courtesy of Rick Kohrs, SSEC).

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed the eye of Category 4 Hurricane Barbara on 02 July 2019. Mesovortices were briefly seen within the eye in the Visible imagery. Barbara was moving through an environment of low deep-layer wind shear and over warm water, factors favorable for rapid intensification (ADT | SATCON).

DMSP-17 SSMIS Microwave (85 GHz) imagery from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below) showed a closed eyewall at 1448 UTC.

A 1700 UTC  GOES-17 “Red” Visible image with an overlay of Metop-A ASCAT winds (below) revealed surface scatterometer wind speeds as high as 76 knots just north of the eye.

===== 03 July Update =====

Barbara maintained Category 4 intensity on 03 July — and 1-minute GOES-17 Visible and Infrared GOES-17 images (above) provided a better view of mesovortices within the eye.

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Back in late March 2019, the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) suffered an anomaly such that the mid-wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (a part that includes channels sensitive to water vapor) was not scanned properly. Thus, NUCAPS soundings created from Suomi-NPP were lost (link). Today, NUCAPS soundings created using NOAA-20 (which has the same instruments as Suomi-NPP) began flowing into AWIPS. Data from shortly after 1500 UTC were the first to appear.

NUCAPS profiles from NOAA-20 are processed somewhat differently than those from Suomi-NPP as far as latency: NOAA-20 NUCAPS profiles show up more quickly — typically within an hour of the observations time — in AWIPS than NPP NUCAPS profiles did. This is important because the thermodynamic information in these mid-afternoon observations is important in judging destabilization relative to morning soundings.

When Suomi NPP was launched, two independent sets of electronics were present on CrIS; the ‘A’-side set of electronics were used until March; the ‘B’-side electronics have been used since June, and mid-wave observations from Suomi-NPP’s CrIS are now available at this site. However, NUCAPS soundings are not yet being created from Suomi-NPP because the A-side and B-side electronics have different statistical behavior that must be accounted for in the Regression used to start the NUCAPS processing.

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