Heavy rains during the first week of April have led to significant flooding along the Ohio (and other) Rivers. The slider above compares True-Color imagery from CSPP Geosphere on 24 March — long before the rains — and on the morning of 7 April 2025 — during the floods. The expansion of the Ohio River, a sinuous brown in the image, is apparent, as is the general greening up of the background as Spring progresses. (Click here for an annotated image from 7 April that includes local geography, and here for the same annotation from 24 March).

Cloud cover after a rain event can make flood detection from satellites a challenge. SAR data can be used to detect floods underneath clouds (or at night) and imagery is available at this RealEarth-powered website. RadarSat imagery from late on 6 April 2025, below, shows the extent of the flooding over southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana. Regions where SAR data suggests flooding is occurring are shown in red.

---

Clear Skies over the Ohio River valley on 8 April allowed for excellent coverage from a multitude of satellites that can assess the horizontal extent of flooding. For example, False-color imagery from Sentinel-2 (at this link), toggled below with a ‘before’ image from 22 March 2025, shows the obvious increase in flood waters.

Sentinel-2A horizontal coverage doesn’t cover the entire flooded region — but clear skies on 8 April allowed the VIIRS flood product to create information over the Ohio River Valley and mid-Mississippi River Valley, as shown in the image below (taken from this website).

---

Added, 11 April 2025, below: The CIMSS Flood Product (1-day VIIRS Composites, source) during the 4 mostly clear days from 7-10 April 2025 is shown below. Memphis is at the southern edge of the image, where the Mississippi takes a long and lazy southerly to westerly curve. Some of the flooded tributaries of the Mississippi in western Tennessee show decreasing flood waters over these 4 days.

View only this post Read Less

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) nighttime Dust RGB + daytime True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) revealed a plume of resuspended volcanic ash (shades of pink/magenta at night, hazy shades of tan during the day) from the 1912 Novarupta-Katmai eruption in Alaska — which was being transported offshore across the Shelikof Strait toward Kodiak Island on 07 April 2025. In the absence of snow cover, surface volcanic ash within the Valley Of Ten Thousand Smokes was being lofted by strong northwesterly winds that were being channeled through the valley. An advisory issued by the Anchorage Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (text | graphic) indicated that the resuspended ash layer extended to maximum altitude of 6000 ft.

In an animation of 1-minute GOES-18 Visible images (below) it is interesting to note that Buoy 46077 in the Shelikof Strait was situated within an eddy of relatively light and variable winds — and there appeared to be minimal amounts of resuspended ash that had become entrained within that eddy.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-16 became the operational GOES-East back in December of 2017 (link). At 1510 UTC, GOES-19 replaced by GOES-16 as the operational GOES-East. GOES-16 is now the back-up satellite for GOES-East and GOES-West, and will presently move to the storage position at 105^oW. The animation below from the CSPP Geosphere site shows GOES-16 and then GOES-19 true-color imagery. There is a subtle color change that occurs between 1456 and 1506 UTC; a very subtle change in the brightness in the blue band (Band 1 at 0.47 µm) is also present. (This color change is discernible in GeoColor at the CIRA SLIDER, as shown in this side-by-side view from 1456 UTC — GOES-16 on the left, GOES-19 on the right). NOAA Scientists are investigating this difference.

View only this post Read Less

During what was the last full day of GOES-16’s duty as GOES-East, a comparison of Shortwave Infrared Images from GOES-16 and GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) (above) showed thermal signatures of prescribed burning in the Flint Hills area of eastern Kansas. These annual Springtime prescribed burns are performed by cattle ranchers in order to remove thatch and weeds that compete with the native grasses, to improve the rangeland grasses for livestock grazing. Other examples of Flint Hills burning activity have been documented here on this blog.

GOES-16 Visible images with an overlay of the Fire Mask derived product (a component of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA) also depicted the areal coverage and diurnal behavior of the fire thermal signatures (below).

The smoke plumes from this prescribed burning activity were better visualized using GOES-16 True Color RGB imagery from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below).

View only this post Read Less