A shallow bank of fog and stratus cloud was moving southward along the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia coast during the pre-dawn and early morning hours on 03 April 2007. GOES-12 3.9µm InfraRed (IR) imagery (above; Java animation) shows that the fog/stratus feature appeared to be “channeled” along the colder waters that were located immediately offshore (between the coastline and the warmer Gulf Stream waters farther offshore) — sea surface temperatures the previous afternoon were 45-55º F on the MODIS SST product. The fog dissipated over the warmer water (and also over land as the warm April sun heated the surface), while the fog immediately off the coast continued to move southward over the patch of colder waters. A comparison of the GOES and MODIS fog/stratus product around 03/04 UTC revealed that the edges of the fog/stratus were much sharper on the 1-km resolution MODIS imagery (and the 4-km resolution GOES fog/stratus product exhibited some “false signal” off the Virginia coast at that time).

GOES-12 visible imagery (below; Java animation) showed better details of the fog/stratus with the 1-km resolution channel; it is interesting to note that the fog/stratus appeared to thicken as a “shock wave” formed along the leading edge upon reaching Cape Henry in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area (MODIS true color images: Terra | Aqua).

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An animation of 3-hourly water vapor channel image composites from AWIPS during the entire month of March 2007 (41 MB QuickTime animation; 1280×1024 screen resolution required) shows the diverse variety of synoptic scale features that affected the Northern Hemisphere during that particular month.

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A wildfire was set by arsonists in the Hollywood Hills near Hollywood, California on the afternoon of 30 March 2007. GOES-12 visible channel imagery (above; Java animation) shows the smoke plume that drifted south/southwestward; corresponding GOES-12 3.9µm InfraRed (IR) imagery (Java animation) revealed a local “hot spot” associated with the fire. The CIMSS GOES-11 Wildfire ABBA product (below) detected a “Processed Fire” (red pixel) as early as 20:30 UTC (1:30 PM local time); a 250-meter resolution Aqua MODIS true color image showed the early stages of the smoke plume at 20:47 UTC (1:47 PM local time).

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An IDEA MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) image (above) depicted elevated AOD values of 0.6 to 0.8 over parts of the Southeast US (especially the northern half of Georgia) on 29 March 2007. Smoke from recent fire activity was likely the main contributor, but some of the elevated AOD signal may also have been due to very high pollen counts in that region — pine tree pollen has been unusually high this Spring season due to abnormally dry conditions that have plagued much of the southeastern US. In addition, light winds and increasing boundary layer moisture were helping to create an environment favorable for particle pollution growth — GOES sounder total precipitable water values of 25-35 mm were becoming more common over that particular region (below).

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