Next-Generation Fire System (NGFS) data within a RealEarth instance (direct link), above, shows the rapid development and growth of multiple fires during the day on 14 March 2025. The RealEarth instance might be an easier way to track fires on an Extreme Fire Weather day like 14 March; the NGFS Alerts Dashboard (https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/ngfs) below (showing only detections in Texas and Oklahoma), in a screenshot from just after 0000 UTC on 15 March), shows many many detections and unless you are keenly aware of Oklahoma geography and county names, it’s hard to know at a glance which fires are which. When plotted on a map as shown above, they are easier to track.

The RealEarth instance has imagery that is probe-able. The probe shown below of the Hickory Hill Road fire lists out different satellite-derived properties at the point probed.

Multiple Fire Warnings have been issued over Oklahoma. At 2336 UTC, the Norman OK WFO website (above) showed the location of active warnings. The NGFS RealEarth display for that time is shown below. Not all of the fires indicated at that time below have Fire Warning associated with them. A Fire Warning occurs as a request to the NWS Forecast Office by their partners. For example, if you were to click on the map above within the Fire Warning polygon southwest of Stillwater, you would have access to the Fire Warning text shown at bottom, issued at the request of the Oklahoma Forestry Service.

The graphic below, from WFO OUN, testifies to the historic nature of this wildfire outbreak. The extraordinary winds — Stillwater OK airport saw gusts exceeding 70 knots — are helping to drive the fires. The widespread dust is apparent in the RealEarth imagery above

There was a very timely and informative Satellite Book Club presentation on Wildfire operations on 13 March 2025. Click here to listen. A separate CIMSS Blog Post (here) discusses the widespread blowing dust event that occurred as the fires burned.

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1-minute GOES-16 Visible images with overlays of 1-minute GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts, from 1501 UTC on 14 March to 0000 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]

Aided by strong southwesterly winds gusting as high as 72 knots (83 mph) behind a cold front, more than 130 wildfires rapidly developed and spread across 44 counties in Oklahoma on 14 March 2025. 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) included overlays of 1-minute GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product (a component of the Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm, FDCA) and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts —  which showed a marked increase in wildfire thermal signatures after about 1900 UTC. Notable wildfires affected the Oklahoma City (KOKC) area (and nearby Norman), in addition to Guthrie (KGOK) and Stillwater (KSWO) — prompting the issuance of Fire Warnings and evacuation notices for those (and many other) locations.  NGFS detections for some of these fires are shown in this blog post.

Incidentally, the wildfire just southwest of Stillwater (KSWO) burned through an Oklahoma Mesonet site from 2041-2045 UTC (2043 UTC GOES-16 image):

The strong winds responsible for the wildfires were also lofting large amounts of blowing dust across the Southern Plains. 5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) displayed the broad swath of dense blowing dust (shades of tan) originating from New Mexico/Texas — as well as another plume of blowing dust moving south-southeastward from eastern Colorado to southwestern Kansas and northwestern Oklahoma (on the back side of a deep low pressure center). In addition, 2 large smoke plumes (pale shades of white) originating in Oklahoma were rising above the blowing dust as they eventually moved eastward and northeastward.

5-minute GOES-16 True Color RGB images, from 1501-2336 UTC on 14 March [click to play MP4 animation]

1-minute GOES-16 Visible images that included plots of Ceiling/Visibility (below) showed how the blowing dust and smoke restricted surface visibility at many locations across Oklahoma, down to values as low as 1/4 mile at times.

1-minute GOES-16 Visible images with overlays of 1-minute GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product and hourly plots of Ceiling/Visibility, from 1501 UTC on 14 March to 0000 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]

===== 15 March Update =====

5-minute GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images, from 1646 UTC on 14 March to 1646 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]

A 24-hour animation of GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images (above) showed the long-range transport of airborne dust from New Mexico/Texas to the western Great Lakes. Dust exhibited brighter shades of magenta in the Nighttime Microphysics RGB imagery.

A longer 36-hour animation of GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) Dust RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) also highlighted the blowing dust as brighter shades of magenta. However, toward the end of the day on 15 March the magenta signature of the airborne dust became more muted as it moved northward from Wisconsin and Michigan toward far southern Ontario.

GOES-19 Dust RGB images, from 1201 UTC on 14 March to 2356 UTC on 15 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

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Imagery from CSPP Geosphere (direct link), above, shows the condensation trail produced by the launch of the SpaceX rocket. Only routine CONUS 5-minute scanning was available to view the launch; very active weather over the southern Plains caused the GOES-16 mesoscale sectors to be positioned north and west of Florida. The 2303 UTC launch (news link), shortly before sunset, created a crescent-shaped condensation trail at 2306 UTC as denoted by the arrow in the animation above. After sunset, Night Microphysics RGB imagery highlights the plume (also highlighted by the arrow) because of its different temperature compared to its surroundings. The rocket is destined for the Space Station and a crew exchange (News article).

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A special Mesoscale Domain Sector from GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational data) provided imagery at 30-second intervals — and Rocket Plume RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) revealed thermal signatures of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s Stage 1 booster engines during the first 4 minutes after launch. The “boost-back burn” (to initiate the Stage 1 booster’s return to the launch site) signature was particularly notable at 23:06:55 UTC.

30-second GOES-19 Rocket Plume RGB images, from 23:03:25 UTC to 23:07:55 UTC on 14 March (courtesy Scott Bachmeier, CIMSS) [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

A closer view using 30-second GOES-19 Near-Infrared (1.38 µm / Band 4, 1.61 µm / Band 5 and 2.24 µm / Band 6) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm / Band 7) images (below) displayed thermal signatures of the Stage 1 booster engines as the Falcon 9 rocket rapidly ascended northeast away from Cape Canaveral during the initial 2 minutes post-launch. In its wake, a more subtle signature of the rocket condensation cloud (that was highlighted above in GOES-16 RGB imagery) could be seen in the GOES-19 Band 4/5/6 images.

30-second GOES-19 Near-Infrared (1.38 µm, top left / 1.61 µm, top right / 2.24 µm, bottom left) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom right) images (courtesy Scott Bachmeier, CIMSS) [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

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I awoke to thunderstorms in Madison, Wisconsin this morning. The elevated storms were riding a warm front at 850 mb, fueled by moderate-to-strong warm-air advection.

This was a good opportunity to look at ProbSevere LightningCast version 2, which includes Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) Reflectivity -10C as a predictor, along with several visible, near-infrared, and longwave-infrared bands from the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). In the animation below, the contours in the left images were produced by LightningCast v1 (ABI-only predictors), whereas the contours in the right images were produced by LightningCast v2 (ABI + MRMS predictors). The background imagery is the GOES-16 IR-only cloud phase RGB and the blue foreground pixels are observed flash-extent density from the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM).

The LightningCast v1 probabilities were lower for the storms in southern Wisconsin compared to LightningCast v2, which had elevated probabilities before lightning initiation. There are likely a couple of reasons that v1 probabilities are lower: 1) the short-wave reflective bands are not contributing at this time, and 2) overlapping mid- and high-level clouds may be obscuring the convective signal for the long-wave infrared predictors.

Overall, we’ve found that LightningCast v2 is very similar to v1, but outperforms v1 in important situations such as in new convective development under thick ice (e.g., anvil clouds), for convective decay, and sometimes in nocturnal convection. We have not seen significant degradation in regions without MRMS coverage or drops in lead time to lightning initiation when applying LightningCast v2.

This new version of LightningCast will be evaluated at the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed in May and June of this year.

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