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Fires in the Upper Midwest

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 (GOES-East) CIMSS Natural Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB), Fire Temperature RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed a small cluster of fires in southeastern North Dakota, as well as isolated fires in far western Minnesota and far northeastern South Dakota on 01 May 2020. Strong winds — gusting over 30 mph at some locations... Read More

GOES-16 CIMSS Natural Color RGB, Fire Temperature RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 CIMSS Natural Color RGB, Fire Temperature RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) CIMSS Natural Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB), Fire Temperature RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed a small cluster of fires in southeastern North Dakota, as well as isolated fires in far western Minnesota and far northeastern South Dakota on 01 May 2020. Strong winds — gusting over 30 mph at some locations — in the wake of a frontal passage helped some of these agricultural fires to intensify for a few hours, with pyrocumulus clouds and a smoke plume being produced by the cluster of fires in southeastern North Dakota.

GOES-16 derived products such as Fire Power, Fire Temperature and Fire Area (below) allow individual fire pixels to be sampled and characterized — for example, at 2136 UTC.

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, top left), Fire Power (top right), Fire Temperature (bottom left) and Fire Area (bottom right) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, top left), Fire Power (top right), Fire Temperature (bottom left) and Fire Area (bottom right) images [click to play animation | MP4]

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NUCAPS and dry air in the Upper Midwest

By Scott Lindstrom •

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... Read More

GOES-16 ABI Band 2 (0.64 µm, visible) and Band 13 (10.3 µm, infrared) along with gridded NUCAPS fields of 925-700mb Relative Humidity, Midwest Base Reflectivity and NUCAPS Sounding availability points (Click to enlarge)

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.

NUCAPS Profiles over Lake Michigan and Green Bay (Click to enlarge)

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30-second GOES-17 imagery of severe thunderstorms over Idaho

By Scott Bachmeier •

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... Read More

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red [click to play animation | MP4]

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.

GOES-17 Dust RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Dust RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

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Ice off the coast of Greenland

By Scott Bachmeier •

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... 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 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.

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