As discussed in this blog post, GOES-13 — launched in May 2006, with a Post Launch Test in December 2006 — served as GOES-East from 2010 to 2017. Image dissemination was terminated on 08 January 2018; the satellite will then begin drifting on 10 January to its storage location at 60º  West longitude. Shown below are the final Full Disk Visible (0.63 µm), Water Vapor (6.5 µm) and Infrared Window (10.7 µm) images broadcast by GOES-13 at 1445 UTC.

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In the wake of the explosive cyclogenesis off the East Coast of the US on 04 January 2018, very cold air began to spread across much of the eastern half of the Lower 48 states. Focusing on the Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia, satellite imagery began to show the formation of ice in the rivers and bays. On 06 January, a 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 false-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) image viewed using RealEarth (above) revealed some of this ice — in particular, long narrow ice floes (snow and ice appear as shades of cyan) that likely emerged from the Back River (northeast of Hampton) and were drifting northward and southward just off the coast of the Virginia Peninsula.

On the following day (07 January), 250-meter resolution Terra MODIS true-color and false-color RGB images from the MODIS Today site (below) showed that a larger V-shaped ice floe was located just southeast of the Peninsula, with its vertex pointed toward the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT). Snow and ice also appear as shades of cyan in the MODIS false-color image.

07 January also happened to be the last full day of imagery to be broadcast by the GOES-13 satellite — a comparison of 1-minute Mesoscale Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible (0.64 µm) and 15-30 minute interval GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) images (below) showed that the V-shaped ice floe continued to drift southwestward toward the HRBT. However, it was difficult to tell whether the ice feature made it over and past the tunnel; even with the improved GOES-16 Visible spatial resolution (0.5 km at satellite sub-point, compared to 1.0 km for GOES-13) and the 1-minute rapid image scans, the ice floe became harder to track during the afternoon hours before high clouds began to overspread the region.

However, a close examination of Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color and false-color images at 1826 UTC (below) indicated that some of the ice had indeed moved westward past Fort Monroe (on the far southeastern tip of the Peninsula) and over/past the HRBT.

On the topic of cold temperatures in southeastern Virginia, a new daily record low of -3 ºF was set at Richmond on the morning of 07 January, and at Norfolk new daily record low and record low maximum temperatures were set (10 ºF and 23 ºF, respectively).

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Shown above are detailed nighttime views of multiple lake effect snow (LES) bands over Lake Superior, provided by Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) images on 04 January, 05 January and 06 January 2018. These “visible images at night” were possible due to ample illumination by the Moon, which was in the Waning Gibbous phase (at 92% of Full on 04 January, 84% of Full on 05 January and 75% of Full on 06 January). The continued flow of arctic air across the still-unfrozen waters of Lake Superior (and the other unfrozen Great Lakes) was responsible for the formation of these and a variety of other LES bands.

Lake effect snow is finally coming to an end across most of the U.P. Here's a look at the 3-day snowfall totals across the region. https://t.co/yoXTpCNRbh pic.twitter.com/rWIGnvFRhf

— NWS Marquette (@NWSMarquette) January 6, 2018

For perspective, the daily morning minimum temperatures at Embarrass, Minnesota are also plotted on the images — on these 3 days Embarrass was the coldest official site in the US (including Alaska).

The VIIRS images were captured by the Space Science and Engineering Center direct broadcast ground station.

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Satellite signatures of a phenomenon known as a “sting jet” have been shown previously on this blog here, here and here. GOES-16 (GOES-East) Lower-level (7.3 µm) Water Vapor images (above) revealed another classic example of the “scorpion tail” signature of a sting jet associated with the rapidly-intensifying storm off the coast of North Carolina on 04 January 2018.

The passenger cruise ship Norwegian Breakaway was en route to New York City from the Bahamas when it experienced very strong winds and rough seas early in the morning on 04 January (media story) — it appears as though the ship may have been in the general vicinity of this sting jet feature (ship data), where intense winds were descending to the surface from higher levels of the atmosphere:

 

Interpolating https://t.co/nNODxB61uj suggests in that vicinity/time. This is NAM nest 06z initialization, near time of https://t.co/NG2ytIaztM. In any event, sailed directly into core of what models correctly predicted to be one of most extreme #bombogenesis rates on record. pic.twitter.com/rcQK7IP2Qv

— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) January 7, 2018

A comparison of GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-13 Water Vapor images (below) demonstrated how the GOES-16 improvement in spatial resolution  (2 km at satellite sub-point, vs 4 km for GOES-13) and more frequent imaging (routinely every 5 minutes over the CONUS domain, vs 15-30 minutes for GOES-13) helped to better follow the evolution of the sting jet feature. The 2 known locations of the Norwegian Breakaway around the time period of the image animation are plotted in red.

The sting jet signature was also apparent on GOES-16 Mid-level (6.9 µm) and Upper-level (6.2 µm) Water Vapor images (below).

In addition, the sting jet signature was evident in a Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) image at 0614 UTC or 1:14 AM Eastern time (below). Through the clouds, the faint glow of city lights in far eastern North Carolina could be seen along the left edge of the image. The cloud features shown using the “visible image at night” VIIRS Day/Night Band were brightly-illuminated by the Moon, which was in the Waning Gibbous phase at 92% of Full; in addition, the hazy appearance just east of the tip of the sting jet cloud boundary was likely due to moonlight reflecting off of an agitated sea surface with large waves and abundant sea spray. A VIIRS instrument is also aboard the JPSS series of satellites, such as the recently-launched NOAA-20.

Another view of the sting jet signature was seen in a 250-meter resolution Aqua MODIS Infrared Window (11.0 µm) image at 0725 UTC (below).

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