A George Strait concert at an outdoor stadium (Nissan Stadium) in Nashville, Tennessee was cancelled by a forced evacuation — due to approaching thunderstorms — just before 10 PM local time on 29 July 2023 (0300 UTC on 30 July). GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed (1) the dissipation and departure of an initial cluster of thunderstorms near Nashville (those storms caused a delay in the start of the concert, with a shelter-in-place warning being issued by stadium officials just before 5 PM local time or 2200 UTC — which was then lifted about 45 minutes later, allowing the concert to begin at its originally-scheduled time), and (2) the development of a new cluster of thunderstorms in north-central Tennessee shortly after 9 PM local time or 0200 UTC, which then approached the Nashville area. The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were around -70ºC (brighter white pixels embedded within darker black regions).

GOES-16 Infrared images that included an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density and contours of Lightning Cast Probability (below) revealed an appreciable amount of lightning activity with these 2 clusters of thunderstorms (which was the primary concern for both the initial shelter-in-place warning prior to the concert start time, and the second shelter-in-place warning that led to the concert cancellation). There was a tight gradient in the contours of LightningCast Probability along the leading edge of the second cluster of thunderstorms as it approached Nashville.   

A time series of LightningCast Probability for Nashville International Airport KBNA (below) includes plots of GLM Flash Counts within a 5 and 10 mile radius of the airport — and showed that LightingCast Probabilities began to increase 30-40 minutes prior to nearby GLM Flash Counts. KBNA is located about 5.5 miles southeast of Nissan Stadium.

Note the “Lightning Advisory” headline that was displayed on the stadium’s big screen as the thunderstorms were approaching at the end of the concert:

Check out this time lapse of the evacuation during the George Strait concert last night at Nissan Stadium. https://t.co/AGiCNs7vR6

(Courtesy: Jamie Watts) pic.twitter.com/ePFXD9osaB

— WKRN News 2 (@WKRN) July 30, 2023

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Day Land Cloud Fire RGB, Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) and Cloud Top Temperature derived product images (above) showed that the Spoon Fire in in east-central Arizona produced a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud late in the day on 27 July 2023. Cloud-top 10.3 µm brightness temperatures reached the -40ºC pyroCb threshold (shades of blue) at 0043 UTC — and later cooled to a minimum of -50.48ºC (with a corresponding Cloud Top Temperature of -54.11ºC) at 0057 UTC (below).

A plot of rawinsonde data from Flagstaff, Arizona at 0000 UTC on 28 July (below) indicated that the -50.48ºC / -54.11ºC cloud-top temperature values were close to the height of the Equilibrium Level (EL) of a Most Unstable (MU) air parcel.

Prior to producing a pyroCb cloud, the Spoon Fire burned very hot — 3.9 µm brightness temperatures reached 137.88ºC (which is the saturation temperature of the GOES-18 ABI Band 7 detectors) shortly after 2300 UTC, and Fire Power values reached 2842.06 MW at 2334 UTC (below). The Fire Power derived product is a component of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm (FDCA),

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Typhoon Doksuri moved between the Philippines and Taiwan late on 26 July 2023 as it approached mainland China. Both Sentinel-1A and RCM-3 overflew the storm shortly after 2200 UTC on 26 July, and those two scenes are shown above in concert with a Band 13 Himawari-9 Clean Window infrared (10.4 µm) imagery. (All SAR observations of Doksuri are available here). The asymmetric nature of the storm is very notable, with winds exceeding 70 knots in the eyewall to the north and east of the storm (winds exceed 80 knots in the convective band farther to the east — the region of white in the wind enhancement used). In contrast, winds in the western eyewall are between 35 and 50 knots — and there is a curious wind speed minimum just west of the eyewall!

A MIMIC-TC animation from 26 July 2023, below, also shows the marked asymmetry in the storm. Doksuri’s path was right along the northern coastline of of Luzon, the northernmost large island of the Philippines. Mountain ranges on that island may have influenced the structure of the storm.

Wind shear over the system at the time of the SAR overpasses was light, but would be acting to displace the convection south and east of the storm center, as observed. The image below was taken from the CIMSS Tropical Weather Site.

For current information on Doksuri, refer to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the Tokyo RSMC, the CIRA Real-Time Tropical Website and the CIMSS Tropical Weather Site.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed the development of thunderstorms across much of the eastern portion of Interior Alaska on 24 July 2023. The large satellite viewing angle — which is 73.5 degrees for Fairbanks (station identifier PAFA) — provided an oblique perspective that nicely displayed the vertical buildup of towering cumulus as well as the formation of thunderstorm anvils.

In the corresponding 1-minute GOES-18 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below), the coldest thunderstorm tops exhibited infrared brightness temperatures around -60ºC (darker shades of red).

When viewing satellite imagery at high latitudes, it is important to keep parallax in mind — so for the thunderstorms that produced wind damage east-southeast and southeast of Fairbanks at 0315 UTC and 0330 UTC, their cloud tops (at an average altitude around 30000 ft) were actually displayed about 32 km (20 miles) to the north-northwest of their true location over the surface (above).

The parallax displacement was apparent in a closer view of 1-minue GOES-18 Visible and Infrared images, centered near Fairbanks, with plots of Severe Thunderstorm Warning polygons (below). 

Pulses of overshooting tops were evident with many of these thunderstorms, such as one seen just northeast of Eielson Air Force Base (PAEI) in a toggle between GOES-18 Visible and Infrared images at 0244 UTC (below) — which was about 30 minutes prior to the first report of damaging winds 15 miles ESE of Fairbanks.

For the overshooting top northeast of PAEI at 0244 UTC, cursor-sampled values of GOES-18 infrared (10.3 µm) brightness temperature, Cloud Top Temperature and Cloud Top Height were -61.85ºC, -63.93ºC and 38669.15 feet, respectively (above) — which, according to a plot of 0000 UTC rawinsonde data from Fairbanks (below), represented an altitude just above the Equilibrium Level (EL) of a Most Unstable (MU) air parcel.

These thunderstorms occurred on a day that Fairbanks set a new daily record high temperature of 90ºF — and a Cooperative Observer in the Fairbanks area reported a high temperature of 92ºF (Regional Temperarture and Precipitation).

Fairbanks officially hit 90°F on Monday. The last time that the Fairbanks airport officially hit 90 degrees before Monday was back in June of 2017. We also broke a daily high temperature record for 7/24. #akwx pic.twitter.com/MWH7c3KXxq

— NWS Fairbanks (@NWSFairbanks) July 25, 2023

The 92F observation from the Ester 5 NE Cooperative station (northwest part of Fairbanks) is the warmest reading in Alaska in 2023.

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) July 25, 2023

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