{"id":11835,"date":"2012-11-11T23:59:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-11T23:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=11835"},"modified":"2012-11-12T21:02:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:02:44","slug":"mesoscale-lake-effect-snow-bands-the-great-salt-lake-and-the-missouri-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/11835","title":{"rendered":"Mesoscale lake-effect snow bands: the Great Salt Lake, and the Missouri River"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 (left) and GOES-13 (right) 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible images (click image to play animation<\/p><\/div>\n

Cold air flowing southeastward across the Great Salt Lake in Utah had enough of a fetch over the warm waters to help set up a well-defined lake-effect snow (LES) band that produced several inches of snowfall downwind of the lake at Salt Lake City on 11 November 2012<\/a><\/strong>. The LES band could be seen in McIDAS images of GOES-15 (GOES-West)<\/em> and GOES-13 (GOES-East)<\/em> 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel data (above; click image to play animation).<\/p>\n

AWIPS images of POES AVHRR 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel and 10.8 \u00c2\u00b5m IR channel data (below)<\/em><\/strong> showed that IR cloud top brightness temperatures within the LES band were as cold as -27\u00c2\u00ba C (darker blue color enhancement)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"POES<\/a>

POES AVHRR 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel and 10.8 \u00c2\u00b5m IR channel images<\/p><\/div>\n

On the previous day, the MODIS Sea Surface Temperature (SST) product (below)<\/em><\/strong> indicated that mid-lake SST values were as warm as 51.5\u00c2\u00ba F (light green color enhancement)<\/em> — so the cold air flowing over the warm waters created a very unstable lower-tropospheric thermal profile that aided the development of the lake-effect snow band. For more discussion on this particular case, see a write-up on The Weather Channel<\/a><\/strong> site.<\/p>\n

\"MODIS<\/a>

MODIS Sea Surface Temperature product<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, farther to the east in South Dakota, cold arctic air was flowing southeastward across the still-unfrozen waters of the Missouri River (whose flow is controlled by several dams that create large reservoirs such as Lake Oahe<\/a><\/strong> and Lake Sharpe<\/a><\/strong>). Even though the fetch of the cold air across the water was relatively small, there were still a number of “lake-effect” or “river-effect” cloud bands seen on GOES-13 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel images (below; click image to play animation)<\/em><\/strong> — in particular, a long and well-defined cloud band extending downwind of the large horseshoe-shaped oxbow bend in Lake Sharpe. Such lake-effect clouds were also described in 2009<\/a> and 2008<\/a> on this blog.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-13<\/a>

GOES-13 0.63 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel images (click image to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n

A comparison of AWIPS images of MODIS 0.65 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel and a false-color Red\/Green\/Blue (RGB) composite (below)<\/em><\/strong> demonstrated the value of using RGB imagery to help discriminate between snow cover (enhanced in darker shades of red)<\/em> and supercooled water droplet clouds (which appear as varying shades of white)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"MODIS<\/a>

MODIS 0.64 \u00c2\u00b5m visible channel and false-color Red\/Green\/Blue (RGB) images<\/p><\/div>\n

A closer view using 250-meter resolution MODIS true-color and false-color RGB images from the SSEC MODIS Today<\/a><\/strong> site (below)<\/em><\/strong> showed even greater detail in the structure of these cloud bands downwind of the Missouri River in South Dakota. In this RGB image, snow cover appeared as shades of cyan.<\/p>\n

\"MODIS<\/a>

MODIS true-color and false-color Red\/Green\/Blue (RGB) images<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cold air flowing southeastward across the Great Salt Lake in Utah had enough of a fetch over the warm waters to help set up a well-defined lake-effect snow (LES) band that produced several inches of snowfall downwind of the lake at Salt Lake City on 11 November 2012. The LES band could be seen in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,11,43,12,26,45,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avhrr","category-goes-13","category-goes-15","category-modis","category-poes","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-winter-weather"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11835"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11843,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11835\/revisions\/11843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}