GOES-14 and GOES-15 0.62 µm Visible images (click image to play animation)

SRSO-R GOES-14 1-minute imagery shows the dynamic nature of the cirrus canopy over developing convection. Strong convection over Montana includes multiple overshooting tops that are visible in the GOES-14 imagery. Routine GOES-15 imagery, also shown, lacks the temporal resolution to capture the growth and decay of many cloud-top features. This is especially true every three hours when a full-disk image is scanned (at 0000 UTC, for example), and at times when satellite housekeeping precludes scanning (at 0045 UTC in this case). The 10.7 µm imagery, below, tells a similar tale. Cold cloud tops appear and vanish at time scales that are not resolved by present operational capabilities.

GOES-R will allow for simultaneous full disk scanning and RSO scanning at the mesoscale.

GOES-14 and GOES-15 10.7 µm IR images (click image to play animation)

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GOES-14 3.9 µm shortwave IR images (click image to play animation)

The GOES-14 satellite was placed into Super Rapid Scan Operations for GOES–R (SRSO-R) mode on 13 August 2013, providing images at 1-minute intervals over the western US. The prime features of interest were wildfires burning in southern Idaho and northern California. McIDAS images of GOES-14 3.9 µm shortwave IR data (above; click image to play animation) showed that some clouds and thunderstorms (black to cyan color enhancement) were moving over Idaho during the pre-dawn hours, but a few flickers of fire “hot spots” (brighter white enhancement) could be seen through breaks in the clouds. Northern California was cloud-free, which allowed a good view of the fire hot spots over that region. Note: real-time GOES-14 SRSO-R images are available here, here, and here.

AWIPS images of GOES-15/GOES-13 10.7 µm IR channel data (below) showed that the thunderstorms moving across Idaho were producing numerous cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, which could have ignited new fire activity.

GOES-15/GOES-13 10.7 µm IR image composite (with cloud-to-ground lightning strikes)

An AWIPS comparison of Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 µm shortwave IR and 0.7 µm Day/Night Band images at 09:30 UTC or 3:30 AM local time (below) revealed that there were still hot spot signatures (brighter white enhancement on the shortwave IR image) evident as the fires in Idaho continued to burn through the night-time hours — and the large fire complexes also exhibited a very bright signature on the corresponding Day/Night Band image. Other bright areas on the Day/Night Band image were city lights.

Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 µm shortwave IR and 0.7 µm Day/Night Band images

With the arrival of daylight, GOES-14 0.63 µm visible channel images (below; click to play animation; also available as a QuickTime movie) showed the dissiparion of the thunderstorms over Idhao during the morning hours.

GOES-14 0.63 µm visible channel images (click image to play animation)

Farther to the south, GOES-14 0.63 µm visible channel images (below; click image to play animation) showed the morning erosion of areas of inland marine stratus, along with a variety of nearshore eddy circulations on different spatial scales: large eddies west of the Los Angeles area, and a series of tiny eddies moving southward from Point Sur.

GOES-14 0.63 µm visible channel images (click image to play animation)

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MTSAT-2 0.73 µm visible channel images (click image to play animation)

MTSAT-2 0.7 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation) and 10.8 µm IR channel images (below; click image to play animation) showed a close-up view of the small “pinhole eye” exhibited by Super Typhoon Utor east of the island of Luzon in the Philippines on 11 August 2013. On the following day, the eyewall of Utor made landfall on Luzon, but the storm had weakened somewhat at that point (to a Category 4 intensity), due to an ongoing eyewall replacement cycle — for more details, see the “From the Lee Side” blog post on Weather Undergrouund.

MTSAT-2 10.8 µm IR channel images (click image to play animation)

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GOES-15 (left) and GOES-13 (right) 0.63 µm visible channel and 3.9 µm shortwave IR channel images (click image to play animation)

A cluster of 4 major fire complexes (the Elk, Pony, McCan, and Beaver complexes) began to exhibit extreme fire behavior on during the afternoon and evening hours on 10 August 2013. A comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West) and GOES-13 (GOES-East) 1-km resolution 0.63 µm visible channel and 4-km resolution 3.9 µm shortwave IR images (above; click image to play animation) showed 2 different perspectives of the many dense smoke plumes and the eventual development of a well-defined pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud whose source appeared to be the Pony Complex. On the shortwave IR images, the hottest fire pixels are enhanced red.

The corresponding 4-km resolution GOES-15 and GOES-13 10.7 µm IR channel images (below; click image to play animation) revealed that the pyroCb cloud first began to exhibit IR brightness temperatures colder than -20 C  (cyan color enhancement) after 20:00 UTC or 1:00 PM local time, -40 C (green color enhancement) after 20:20 UTC or 1:30 PM local time, and -60 C (darker red color enhancement) after 00:30 UTC or 6:30 PM local time.

GOES-15 (left) and GOES-13 (right) 10.7 µm IR channel images (click image to play animation)

Several hours later, a comparison of 1-km resolution Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 µm and 4-km resolution GOES-13 3.9 µm shortwave IR images just after 4 AM local time (below) demonstrated the advantage of higher spatial resolution for detecting the true location of fire “hot spots” (black to yellow to red color enhancement). Note that there is also a significant westward displacement of the largest hot spot cluster on the GOES-13 image — there is a known navigation error with the GOES 3.9 µm channel imagery, which is in the process of being corrected.

Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 µm and GOES-13 3.9 µm shortwave IR images

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