A total lunar eclipse occurred on 07 September 2025 (Space.com) — and as the Moon moved between GOES-18 (GOES-West), GOES-19 (GOES-East) and the Sun, SUVI imagery was totally obscured. The period that the Moon totally blocked the Sun was from 0840-0928 UTC with GOES-18 (above), and from 0434-0522 UTC with GOES-19 (below).

The times that the Moon’s edge was beginning to move away from the Sun were 0932 UTC as seen from GOES-18, and 0526 UTC as seen from GOES-19. Several solar prominences were apparent as they emanated from the eastern/northeastern limb of the Sun. These SUVI images were sourced from the SSEC Geostationary Satellite Imagery site.

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Lightning caused a 1-hour delay in the Eagles vs Cowboys football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia (NFL.com) during the evening hours on 04 September 2025 (as a pre-frontal squall line was approaching the area) — the delay lasted from 10:25 pm ET (0225 UTC on 05 September) to 11:30 pm ET (0330 UTC on 05 September). A plot of GOES-19 LightningCast Probability and GOES-19 (GOES-East) GLM Flash Extent Density (above) displayed the increase in LightningCast Probability and Flash Extent Density around the time of the game delay.

An animation of 5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 Infrared images with an overlay of Flash Extent Density and contours of LightningCast Probability (below) showed the thunderstorms with satellite-detected lightning activity as they approached Philadelphia and Lincoln Financial Field (the cyan dot just south of Philadelphia).

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 Infrared images with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, parallax-corrected GLM Flash Points and parallax-corrected contours of LightningCast Probability (below) provided a closer view at higher temporal resolution. Lincoln Financial Field is located about 5 miles northeast of Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL).

There was satellite-detected lightning activity just west of the stadium at 0234 UTC, about 10 minutes after the game was initially delayed (below), and very near the stadium at 0240 UTC — close to the time that the Twitter photo of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike was taken (see the bottom of this blog post).

104 lightning events were detected within 15 km of Lincoln Financial Field last night between 10:16 and 10:53 pm. pic.twitter.com/uEInCaIkzZ

— Chris Vagasky ?? (@COweatherman) September 5, 2025

?INSANE PHOTO?

Photo above Lincoln Financial Field tonight of the LIGHTNING STRIKING.

?

The #Eagles – #Cowboys game are currently in a delay due to the weather. pic.twitter.com/Vhz0ELhAbX

— MLFootball (@_MLFootball) September 5, 2025

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Visible and Infrared images (above) showed the westward motion of of Hurricane Kiko during an 8.5-hour period as the tropical cyclone was rapidly intensifying (SATCON) from a Category 2 storm at 1500 UTC on 03 September 2025 to a Category 3 storm at 1800 UTC and then to a Category 4 storm at 2100 UTC. Visible imagery revealed low-altitude mesoscale vortices that were occasionally evident within the eye. Plots of 1-minute GOES-18 GLM Flash Points displayed intermittent lightning activity within the eyewall — and the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures within the eyewall were in the -80ºC to -85ºC range.

Kiko was moving through an environment characterized by low values of deep-layer wind shear (below), and moving over relatively warm water — two factors that were favorable for tropical cyclone intensification.

An AMSU-B Microwave image at 1815 UTC (below) displayed a closed eyewall around the time that Kiko reached Category 4 intensity.

A RCM-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image (source) at 0301 UTC on 04 September (below) depicted a maximum wind speed of 118.35 kts within the eyewall of Kiko.

1-minute CIMSS True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) showed a larger-scale view of Kiko.

MIMIC Total Precipitable Water images (below) indicated that Kiko (centered around 13ºN and moving between 130ºW and 140ºW) was beginning to tap moisture from the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).

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Driven by a dry summer, numerous fires have been ignited in the Pacific northwest of the United States and far southwestern Canada. These fires were largely ignited by lightning from late summer storms, but continued drying in the area has both increased susceptibility to fire while also preventing rain from quenching the flames. The largest fire, Bear Gulch Fire on the Olympic Peninsula, has grown to over 9400 acres while containment holds steady at around 10%. The true color RGB from GOES-18 as displayed on CSPP Geosphere clearly shows the nearly state-wide extent of the smoke on an otherwise cloud-free day.

The GOES Fire Temperature RGB product (described here) uses a combination of the 3.9, 2.2, and 1.6 micron channels to provide a qualitative assessment of fire temperature. Since these are shortwave channels, they are subject to solar reflectance. However, the brightness temperatures of fires are so great that they can still be seen in the day. The hotter a fire is, the more emission it produces at the shorter wavelengths. When those three channels are combined into an RGB recipe, the fire hot spots change from red to yellow to white with increasing fire temperature as more influence from those shorter-wavelength channels is present.

This animation below shows the Fire Temperature RGB product in action. Note the numerous red dots across the region.

However, the Bear Gulch Fire is hardly visible via this product despite being the largest fire in the state of Washington. Located southwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula, this fire is only intermittently present on the RGB product. Zooming in on the target area helps emphasize this as the bright red dot representing the fire only appears briefly over the course of a 2+ hour long animation.

The reason for this has to do, in part, with the unique terrain of the region. The GOES aerosol optical depth product vividly indicates just how extensive the smoke is across the state of Washington. However, the plume from the Bear Gulch Fire (seen as the red area in western Washington just west of Puget Sound in the below movie) has a much smaller extent than many of the other, smaller fires. This is because the mountainous terrain is largely trapping the smoke.

This trapped smoke results in a higher optical depth than in other locations, which then obscures the infrared emission from the fire. As a result, the 3.9 micron channel view of the fire is largely insensitive to the fire’s high temperatures; only occasionally does the smoke plume abate enough to enable some of that intense radiant energy to escape to space.

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