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Severe turbulence southwest of Hawai’i

By Scott Bachmeier •

An Air Canada flight encountered severe turbulence southwest of Hawai’i on 11 July 2019, which injured 37 passengers (media report 1 | media report 2 | pilot report text | pilot report location | flight path | flight data). GOES-17 (GOES-West)  Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images (above) and Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (below) revealed subtle gravity waves propagating westward... Read More

GOES-17 Upper-level Water Vapor images, with pilot reports of turbulence [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images, with pilot reports of turbulence [click to play animation | MP4]

An Air Canada flight encountered severe turbulence southwest of Hawai’i on 11 July 2019, which injured 37 passengers (media report 1 | media report 2 | pilot report text | pilot report location | flight path | flight data). GOES-17 (GOES-West)  Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images (above) and Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images (below) revealed subtle gravity waves propagating westward from clusters of thunderstorms located near 160º W longitude. In addition, a small and short-lived thunderstorm developed just north of the turbulence event, which also produced subtle gravity waves (those waves could have interfered with the other waves emanating from the larger storms to the east) — and an even smaller, shorter-lived convective cell developed very near to and right around the time of the 1411 UTC turbulence encounter.

GOES-17 Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images, with pilot reports of turbulence [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) images, with pilot reports of turbulence [click to play animation | MP4]

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Undular bore in the southern High Plains

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images (above) showed the southward propagation of an undular bore across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas on 10 July 2019. This feature appeared to play a role in convective initiation over the Texas Panhandle —... Read More

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Low-level Water Vapor (7.3 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm) images (above) showed the southward propagation of an undular bore across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas on 10 July 2019. This feature appeared to play a role in convective initiation over the Texas Panhandle — and this thunderstorm produced hail and strong winds (SPC storm reports).

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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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