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Nighttime Tornado in Los Angeles

Early this morning at around 3:15 AM local time, an EF-0 tornado touched down in Pico Rivera, a community in Los Angeles County, California. It damaged several homes and knocked down numerous trees over the course of its mile-long path. Numerous instances of damaging winds were also reported, as seen... Read More

Early this morning at around 3:15 AM local time, an EF-0 tornado touched down in Pico Rivera, a community in Los Angeles County, California. It damaged several homes and knocked down numerous trees over the course of its mile-long path. Numerous instances of damaging winds were also reported, as seen on the NOAA SPC Storm Reports page. Fortunately, there were no reports of injuries.

NOAA SPC storm reports for this event. Due to the way that SPC organizes data from 1200 to 1159 UTC each day, this event is assigned to March 12th even though it happened on March 13th. The red dot in California indicates the location of the tornado.

Tornadoes in Los Angeles County are comparatively rare, but not unheard of. This is the 50th recorded tornado in the county since 1950, and every month of the year has had at least one tornado report. The peak season for LA County tornadoes is winter and spring with more tornadoes recorded in January than any other month; with today’s event, March is now tied for second on that list. The NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database is an invaluable tool for analyses like these.

This particular storm event was driven by an advancing cold front linked to a low pressure system offshore. A steady stream of moist air from the Pacific ensured sufficient moisture to support convection. That is evident in the GOES-18 Band 8 upper level water vapor imagery, which shows a plume of moisture pointed directly at the greater Los Angeles area.

Band 8 upper water vapor imagery from 0830 – 1030 UTC (1:30 AM – 3:30 AM local time).

A polar-orbiting overpass at 0930 UTC (2:30 AM local time, approximately 45 minutes before tornadogenesis) provided Gridded NUCAPS observations. The 700-500 mb lapse rate product from Gridded NUCAPS shows lapse rates over LA County to be close to the critical conditionally unstable value of 6.0 C/km, with more unstable air aloft coming onshore from the south. The elevated lifting from the advancing front coupled with the elevated instability was enough to support deep convection.

Gridded NUCAPS 700-500 mb lapse rate for 0930 UTC (2:30 AM local time).

Forecasters anticipated the potential weather overnight and the GOES-18 mesoscale sector was active for this event, providing images every minute. Since it was nighttime, none of the products that depend on shortwave channels were available, but many interesting things can be discerned from the longwave imagery. The Channel 13 IR window view shows the cold cloud top temperatures associated with the deep, moist convection, while the speckled orange portions of the Night Microphysics RGB help to confirm that the clouds over LA are deep, thick, and moisture-laden. Mesoscale sectors are available in AWIPS, or are freely available to everyone at SSEC RealEarth.

One-minute mesoscale sector scans of Band 13 from GOES-18 from 1000 to 1030 UTC (3:00 AM – 3:30 AM UTC)
As in the figure above, but for the night microphysics product.

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Blowing dust across Texas

W-NW winds gusting in excess of 50 mph in the wake of a cold front lofted areas of blowing dust across parts of Texas on 12 March 2025, as seen in GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above). Blowing dust reduced the visibility to 1-1/2 miles at times along the Interstate 20... Read More

GOES-16 Red Visible (0.64 µm) images with plots of Surface Wind barbs (white), Peak Wind gusts (yellow) and Ceiling/Visibility/Weather (cyan); Interstate highways are plotted in red [click to play MP4 animation]

W-NW winds gusting in excess of 50 mph in the wake of a cold front lofted areas of blowing dust across parts of Texas on 12 March 2025, as seen in GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above). Blowing dust reduced the visibility to 1-1/2 miles at times along the Interstate 20 corridor in the vicinity of Midland.

Daytime True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a more distinct view of the blowing dust — and after sunset, Dust RGB images highlighted the airborne dust as shades of magenta.

GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + nighttime Dust RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

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Ice leads in the eastern Beaufort Sea

A sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible images (above) showed the formation of large ice leads in the eastern Beaufort Sea — as well as the growth of a polynya adjacent to the coast near the Alaska/Yukon border — during the 5-day period from 07-11 March 2025.Suomi-NPP VIIRS Shortwave Infrared images... Read More

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible images from 07-11 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

A sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Visible images (above) showed the formation of large ice leads in the eastern Beaufort Sea — as well as the growth of a polynya adjacent to the coast near the Alaska/Yukon border — during the 5-day period from 07-11 March 2025.

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Shortwave Infrared images (below) provided a view of the ice leads and polynya during both the nighttime and daytime hours during the 07-11 March period.

Suomi-NPP VIIRS Shortwave Infrared images from 07-11 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Daily composites of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Sea Ice Temperature/Thickness/Age products (source) indicated that the larger ice leads were developing near the gradient of temperature and thickness of old ice in the eastern Beaufort Sea (below).

Daily Suomi-NPP VIIRS Composite Sea Ice Temperature product, from 07-10 March [click to enlarge]

Daily Suomi-NPP VIIRS Composite Sea Ice Thickness product, from 07-10 March [click to enlarge]


Suomi-NPP VIIRS Composite Sea Ice Age product, from 07-10 March [click to enlarge]

In spite of lower spatial resolution and a large satellite viewing angle, the more prominent ice leads (as well as the polynya adjacent to the Alaska/Yukon coast) were also apparent in GOES-18 (GOES-West) Visible images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below).

GOES-18 Visible images from 07-11 March [click to play MP4 animation]

Comparisons of Ice Stage and Ice Analysis (source) shown below indicated that the 2 largest ice leads and the polynya formed during the 7-day period between 03 March and 10 March.

Ice Stage on 03 March and 10 March [click to enlarge]

Ice analysis on 03 March and 10 March [click to enlarge]

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When upper air soundings are missing: NUCAPS can help

Several recent notices have announced that radiosonde-carrying balloon launches to measure the temperature and moisture (and winds) in the atmosphere are suspended due to personnel shortages. There are products available to mitigate this data shortage. NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) profiles (training video here) use data from CrIS/ATMS (on... Read More

Several recent notices have announced that radiosonde-carrying balloon launches to measure the temperature and moisture (and winds) in the atmosphere are suspended due to personnel shortages. There are products available to mitigate this data shortage. NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) profiles (training video here) use data from CrIS/ATMS (on NOAA-20/NOAA-21) and IASI/AMSU/MHS (on Metop-C) to create thermodynamic profiles.

Where can these data be accessed? For National Weather Service WFOs, they are available in AWIPS under the ‘Satellite’ tab (and then ‘JPSS Polar’); then look at ‘NUCAPS Sounding Availability’, shown below, and ‘Gridded NUCAPS’. When NUCAPS Sounding Availability is on your screen, you can profiles by clicking on the points. For example, the Sounding Availability plot below shows two different profile locations in far southern coastal Maine; profiles at these two points are shown below as well. The low-level warming one might expect during the day is captured well.

NUCAPS Sounding Availability over the northeast USA, 1415 UTC on 11 March 2025; this plot shows multiple overpasses (Click to enlarge)
Nsharp Sounding Display for two NUCAPS Profiles near 43.5 N, 70.4 W, 1644 and 1737 UTC on 11 March 2025 (Click to enlarge)

Gridded NUCAPS fields show values that have been interpolated to a pressure level on a grid. In the animation of 850-mb temperature plotted in AWIPS and shown below, showing a combination of MetopC, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 fields, the 0oC isotherm is progressing northward through Maine in the 11 hours shown. The number of observations is far greater than the number of radiosondes that would have launched in this time.

850-mb Temperatures from gridded NUCAPS fields, 0600-1730 UTC on 11 March 2025. The black contour highlights 32 F/0 C (Click to enlarge)

Gridded NUCAPS fields are also available online. The images below show values over the Pacific Ocean (where radiosondes are routinely absent), and they show a stable and dry region arcing toward the Pacific Northwest from the tropics. Perhaps the cloudband in about the same location in the nightmicrophysics RGB (from the CSPPGeosphere site) is related to this NUCAPS-observed feature.

Gridded NUCAPS estimates of 850-700 mb lapse rate and 700-mb Relative Humidity, 1022 UTC on 11 March 2025 (left) and GOES-18 Night Microphysics RGB at the same time (right) (Click to enlarge)

Use gridded NUCAPS when (that is, always!) you need supplemental observations of the troposphere.

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