The Storm Prediction Center issued Extreme Fire Weather Outlooks (1200 UTC | 1700 UTC) that covered much of the central and southern Plains on 17 February 2026. A large-scale view of 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) included plots of Fire Mask pixels — which depicted the development of numerous wildfires, most notably along the Oklahoma/Kansas border.

A closer view using 1-minute GOES-19 Shortwave Infrared images (below) showed the Ranger Road Fire that began to burn in Beaver County, Oklahoma around 1716 UTC — and strong SW winds (with peak gusts in the 50-56 kt range) ahead of an approaching cold front (surface analyses) helped this fire make a rapid 65-mile run to the northeast, crossing the border into Meade/Clark/Comanche Counties in far southern Kansas. The Ranger Road Fire burned at least 145000 acres, and prompted the issuance of Fire Warnings and evacuation orders along/ahead of its path.

Near the leading edge of the Ranger Road Fire (in Clark County in far southern Kansas), it first exhibited a maximum 3.9 µm brightness temperature of 137.77ºC — which is the saturation temperature of GOES-19 Band 7 detectors — at 2354 UTC (below).

1-minute GOES-19 GeoColor RGB images with an overlay of Next Generation Fire System (NGFS) Fire Detection polygons (below) displayed the thermal signatures, smoke plume and pyrocumulus clouds associated with the Ranger Road Fire. Surface observations in the vicinity of the fire depicted wind gusts as high as 65 mph at 2140 UTC.

The Ranger Road wildfire continues to burn across a large portion of NE Beaver county in the Oklahoma Panhandle. A Fire Warning remains in effect through 8:30 PM, including the towns of Knowles and Gate. #phwx #okwx pic.twitter.com/Rm9Qn0xgjH

— NWS Amarillo (@NWSAmarillo) February 17, 2026

===== 21 February Update =====

A 30-meter resolution Landsat-9 Natural Color RGB image (above) showed the burn scar of the Ranger Road Fire 4 days later, at 1720 UTC on 21 February.

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An intriguing fog event took place over Lake Superior on Sunday, 15 February. On a day that was otherwise clear and unseasonably warm, fog crept westward as though it was trying to cover the entire lake. The following animation shows the entire day of GOES-19 true color imagery as viewed by SSEC’s Real Earth. There even appears to be a hint of rotation evident as the fog against the north shore appears to rap around the center of the open water.

It’s worth looking at what might have caused this event. First, let’s look at the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB for a portion of this period. In this product, low-level liquid clouds (like fog) appear blue/cyan while surface water is black and surface snow and ice are green. The surface observations for this time have also been overlaid on this image.

This is a challenging time of the year to discern what conditions are like over the Great Lakes thanks to freezing conditions. Buoys have generally been removed to protect them from damage from the ice, and satellite-based wind observations are also inhibited by the ice. Thus, we are largely flying blind over the lake itself. Still, we can put some things together. First, note how cold air is pooling within the lake basin. This is especially evident when looking at the western tip of Superior. There are three ASOS stations in greater Duluth, Minnesota. The Duluth International Airport is located on the continental crust at an elevation of 1428 feet above sea level. The Richard Bong Airport in Superior is located on the mid-continental rift at a much lower elevation of 674 feet. However, Sky Harbor airport is located on a sand bar in the lake and has a much lower elevation of 609 feet. At 1926 UTC (1:26 PM local time), that lower elevation is at least 10 degrees colder than the surrounding, higher elevations. We know that the lake surface temperature is near freezing given the presence of the ice. From all of this, we can infer that there is a decently strong inversion present over the lake. Note also that the near-lake air is already close to saturation, as the Sky Harbor dew point is just 2 degrees F less than the air temperature.

A similar dynamic can be seen further up the coast at Grand Marais, Minnesota. Here, the airport is 8 miles inland and over 1,000 feet above the lake surface, where an additional set of observations is available. Note how the lake air is a full 11 degrees colder than the airport location, while both sites have the same dew point.

Next, there appears to be a weak low pressure system near the border of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, as seen in the following NOAA Weather Prediction Center surface analysis. With the low to the south of Lake Superior, we would expect weak easterly flow over the lake, which is more or less backed up by the surface wind observations above.

The fog itself is quite shallow, which we can determine by looking at the brightness temperature of the top of the fog. Since fog acts as a near-blackbody in the infrared window, the brightness temperature of the fog in Band 13 is a reasonable estimate of the temperature of the top of the fog. The AWIPS readout tool says that the IR brightness temperature in the middle of the fog is -5 C, or about 23 F. The IR brightness temperature of the clear lake is only slightly warmer at -2.6 C (27 F ,not shown).

Putting it all together, we have easterly flow, a strong inversion, and a shallow fog layer that is both thick and uniform. Based on this, it’s likely that this is an advection fog. Warmer air from the non-lake regions moved into the cold lake basin, where it cooled and reached saturation. Since air is a poor conductor of heat, the air above the surface stayed warm which was reflected in the higher temperatures of the more elevated locations.

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The NASA/SpaceX Crew-12 Mission to the International Space Station was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1015 UTC on 13 February 2026 — and overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors from GOES-19 (GOES-East) provided 30-second images from all 16 ABI spectral bands (above). Since this was a nighttime launch, varying shades of white signatures of the Falcon 9 rocket booster were seen in the Visible (02) and Near-Infrared (03-06) spectral bands as the rocket ascended to the northeast — while warmer rocket booster thermal signatures were apparent in many of the Infrared spectral bands (07-16) [10:17:25 UTC 16-panel images]. In addition, a cooler signature of the rocket’s condensation cloud was evident in many of the Infrared spectral bands, as that cloud drifted southeastward just offshore.

In spite of an oblique satellite viewing angle, many of the same Falcon 9 rocket booster signatures were seen in 1-minute GOES-18 (GOES-West) imagery (below) [1016 UTC 16-panel images]. (The 16-panel GOES-19 and GOES-18 images were displayed in their respective native satellite projections.)

A slightly longer animation of 30-second GOES-19 Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) showed the aforementioned rocket booster condensation cloud (darker shades of blue) drifting southeast just offshore — along with the hot thermal signature (darker purple pixel) of the rocket booster landing burn as it returned to the launch site at 1023 UTC.

30-second GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a larger-scale view of the rocket booster signature as the Falcon 9 traveled northeast away from the launch site.

A comparison of 1-minute Rocket Plume RGB images from both GOES-18 and GOES-19 (below) nicely demonstrated the effect of parallax — since the satellite viewing angle from GOES-18 was 68.98 degrees from the southwest (compared to only 33.56 degrees from the south-southeast from GOES-19), the apparent location of the high-altitude Rocket Plume RGB signature was displaced much farther to the east as viewed from GOES-18 (1018 UTC images). (The GOES-18/GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images were re-mapped to a common projection.)

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VIIRS Infrared images from Suomi-NPP and NOAA-21 (above) showed widespread ice leads (brighter shades of cyan) in the Beaufort Sea during the 3-day period from 10-12 February 2026 — with a notable increase in ice leads across the eastern Beaufort Sea.

Surface wind stress was the primary influence affecting the motion and evolution of these ice leads. Surface analyses (below) showed that a tighter pressure gradient developed across the Beaufort Sea during the 3-day period — between high pressure centered over the Siberian Sea and broad cyclonic flow across the Bering Sea and interior/northern Alaska — which would have induced a stronger easterly flow across much of the VIIRS image domain displayed above.

Daily results using an AI-based sea ice lead detection method covering the entire Arctic Ocean are shown below; the Beaufort Sea is located within the bottom right portion of the images.

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