JetBlue Flight 429 encountered severe turbulence over south-central South Dakota around 0115 UTC on 12 August (7:15 pm local time on 11 August) 2016, which caused injuries to 22 passengers and 2 crew members (media story). The aircraft (flying from Boston MA to Sacramento CA) had to be diverted to Rapid City SD, as seen on the flight path map above (source: FlightAware.com).

1-km resolution GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) images (above) showed widespread thunderstorms across the region, with rapidly-developing new cells forming in the vicinity of the turbulence encounter. A Turbulence AIRMET had been issued around 23 UTC for that portion of the flight path, and Convective SIGMETs also advised of the potential for severe thunderstorms with tops above 45,000 feet (JetBlue 429 was cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet).

The corresponding 4-km resolution GOES-13 Infrared Window (10.7 µm) images (below) indicated that cloud-top IR brightness temperatures were as cold as -54º C (orange color enhancement) just east of the pilot report at 0100 UTC.

1-km resolution POES AVHRR Visible (0.86 µm) and Infrared (12.0 µm) images at 0049 UTC (below) provided a more detailed view of the developing cells less than 30 minutes prior to the turbulence encounter.

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GOES-13 (GOES-East) Water Vapor (6.5 µm) images (above) showed the intensification of a strong cyclone over Hudson Bay, Canada during the 09 August – 10 August 2016 period; the cyclone deepened to a central pressure of 980 hPa (28.94″ of mercury) at 06 UTC on 10 August.

Daily composites of Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) images visualized using RealEarth (below) showed the storm on 08, 09 and 10 August.

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1-minute SRSO-R GOES-14 Visible (0.63 µm) images (above; also available as a 265 Mbyte animated GIF) showed the development of severe thunderstorms which produced large hail and damaging winds (SPC storm reports) in southeastern North Dakota, northeastern South Dakota and far western Minnesota on 10 August 2016. SPC noted a region of enhanced instability centered over southeastern North Dakota around 16 UTC (MCD); it is interesting to note that an orphan anvil was seen to form around 13 UTC between Valley City (KBAC) and Gwinner (KGWR) — near the northern edge of the pocket of instability — before the main convection began to develop just north of the North Dakota/South Dakota border around 1515 UTC.

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GOES-14 is in SRSO-R mode from today through 25 August, providing 1-minute imagery over western portions of the United States. The geographic footprint for 9 August 2016 is shown above (realtime images), and the 15-minute animation contains 13 images, versus the normal 2 that GOES-East or GOES-West would provide during routine scanning. This one-minute imagery is being provided to help prepare for GOES-R; GOES-R is scheduled to launch on 4 November, and when operational it will routinely provide 1-minute imagery in mesoscale sectors.

Shown below is a comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West), GOES-14 and GOES-13 (GOES-East) Visible images covering the longer 1-hour period of 1230-1330 UTC, focusing on a area of thunderstorms over North Texas. During this time, there are 53 images from GOES-14, compared to 7 images from GOES-15 and 5 images from GOES-13 — note how the evolution of overshooting tops is very easy to follow using the 1-minute GOES-14 imagery.

GOES-14 also monitored the dissipation of fog/low stratus clouds over Nebraska, as seen in the animation below. Additional details can be found here.

Later in the day, the GOES-14 Visible (0.62 µm) animation below (also available as a large 62 Mbyte animated GIF) showed the development of severe thunderstorms in Montana and Wyoming, which produced several reports of damaging winds and large hail (up to 4.0 inches in diameter). This example is particularly noteworthy due to the fact that the storm was well-sampled by satellite imagery in a region of poor radar coverage (h/t to @DanLindsey77). For additional details on this case, see the VISIT Meteorological Interpretation Blog.

A 3-panel comparison of Visible images from GOES-15 and GOES-13 (available at the routine 15-30 minute interval) and GOES-14 (available at 1-minute intervals) is shown below.

During the early afternoon hours, the GOES-15 (GOES-West) satellite performed a “North/South Station Keeping maneuver”, during which there was no imaging between 1700-1900 UTC. To help cover for this outage, the GOES-13 (GOES-East) satellite was paced into Full Disk scan mode, which provided only 1 image every 30 minutes. During this time period, the 1-minute imagery from GOES-14 (shown below) was essential to monitor such features as a wildfire burning southeast of Ely, Nevada (station identifier KELY). Two apparent flare-ups of the fire were seen in the areal coverage of the hottest pixels (red) on GOES-14 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images at 1805 UTC and 1807 UTC, which were not captured by the 30-minute GOES-13 imagery. In fact, the 1745 UTC GOES-13 Shortwave Infrared image suggested that there was a brief reduction in the intensity of the fire (indicated by a lack of red pixels), which was not the case according to the 1-minute GOES-14 imagery.

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