The toggle above shows the 3.9 µm brightness temperature over New Mexico at 0332 UTC on 1 June and the GOES-16 Fire Temperature Derived Product. Two areas of fires are apparent, one in the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico, and one in northeast New Mexico (The Ute Park fire), in a region of extreme drought (Linked image from the US Drought Monitor).

At night, as above, the location of a smoke plume can be difficult to discern. Real Earth now includes (under the ‘Fires’ folder) tiles of the HRRR Surface Smoke Forecast, as shown below in 1-hour time increments between 0600 and 1200 UTC on 1 June.

The excellent temporal resolution of GOES-16 allows for close monitoring of fires. The Ute Park fire is shown below in 3.9 µm imagery, and its evolution during the night is apparent.

During the day, visible imagery is available to track smoke plumes. The “Blue Band” visible imagery, below (0.47 µm), from GOES-16 suggests the smoke plume from the Ute fire extends into Kansas.

More information on the Ute Park fire is here and here.

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Early on 1 June 2018, clear skies allowed an unobstructed view of the still-erupting Kilauea from Suomi-NPP. (Orbit paths from this link).   The image above steps through the Day Night Band 0.7 µm Visible Image, the 3.75 µm Shortwave Infrared, and the 11.45 µm Longwave Infrared. The warm signatures of the lava extend all the way into the ocean.

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On 30 May 2018, hazy skies were widespread over the Mariana Islands, haze that could be traced back to Hawaii. (The picture above looks northeast from Nimitz Hill on the island of Guam).

The visible imagery below shows a pall of haze entrenched within the tropical easterlies from south and west of Hawai’i all the way across the Pacific Basin to Guam — a distance of some 4000 miles! (Himawari imagery courtesy Brandon Aydlett, NWS GUM, where the National Weather Service day begins!)

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed thunderstorms which produced hail, damaging winds and tornadoes (SPC storm reports) across southeastern Idaho on 31 May 2018. Note that after 2102 UTC a pronounced “enhanced-v” infrared storm top signature was exhibited by the larger supercell which produced most of the severe weather. The SPC storm reports on the imagery are “parallax-corrected”, such that they are plotted at a location matching the corresponding cloud-top features (applying the 10-km tropopause height from the 00 UTC Boise rawinsonde report).

As a surface cold front was moving through Idaho, large-scale forcing for ascent was increasing across the region within the middle troposphere as an upper-level trough moved eastward over California and Nevada — and strong southwesterly flow ahead of this trough was evident over eastern Idaho on GOES-16 Low-level (7.3 µm), Mid-level (6.9 µm) and Upper-level (6.2 µm) Water Vapor images (below).

The 2018 Severe Weather Season is off to a record pace in SE Idaho. Also, more Tornado Warnings have been issued by our office so far this year than for much of Texas. Charts and Maps courtesy of Iowa Environmental Mesonet. #idwx pic.twitter.com/8hzamBHZGQ

— NWS Pocatello (@NWSPocatello) June 2, 2018

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Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 overflew tropical depression Alberto, at 0722 and 0812 UTC, respectively (orbit paths from this site), on 30 May 2018, and the near-Full moon provided ample illumination for the Day Night Band imagery, shown above.  A motion to the northeast is apparent.  Convection developed far to the north of the storm as well, south of Chicago, and a streak of lightning occurs over Oklahoma in the later image.  (For individual Day Night Band images in the loop, click here for Suomi NPP and here for NOAA-20) A similar loop, below, shows the Window Channel (11.45 µm) from the VIIRS instrument on Suomi NPP and NOAA-20. A tip of the Hat to Will Straka, CIMSS, for the imagery.

Added: NOAA-20 was declared Operational on 30 May 2018. Welcome NOAA-20!

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