{"id":17005,"date":"2014-10-14T23:59:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T23:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=17005"},"modified":"2014-10-17T13:03:11","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T13:03:11","slug":"october-snowfall-on-the-big-island-of-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/17005","title":{"rendered":"October snowfall on the Big Island of Hawai’i"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 6.5 \u00b5m water vapor channel images (click to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n

McIDAS images of GOES-15 (GOES-West)<\/em> 6.5 \u00b5m water vapor channel data (above; click image to play animation)<\/strong><\/em> showed an upper-level low that moved from east to west over the Hawaiian Islands during the 13 October – 14 October 2014 period. This low forced the development of widespread showers and thunderstorms, especially over the Big Island of Hawai’i — and even produced some snowfall in the highest elevations around the summits of Mauna Kea<\/strong><\/a> and Mauna Loa<\/strong><\/a>. Some excerpts from Area Forecast Discussions issued by the National Weather Service at Honolulu<\/strong><\/a> on 13 October:<\/p>\n

FXHW60 PHFO 131350
\nAFDHFO<\/tt><\/p>\n

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
\nNATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI
\n400 AM HST MON OCT 13 2014
\n[…]
\nFORECAST MODELS HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY CALLING FOR 500 MB TEMPERATURES BETWEEN -12 AND -13C WITHIN THE CORE OF THE COMPACT UPPER LOW. THIS IS EXCEPTIONALLY COLD FOR OCTOBER
\n[…]
\nFORECAST MODELS SHOW THAT THIS FEATURE WILL HOLD AS IT MOVES OVER THE BIG ISLAND LATER TODAY INTO TONIGHT…LIKELY PRODUCING ACCUMULATING SNOW OVER THE SUMMITS ABOVE 12000 FT. AS A RESULT…A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY HAS BEEN ISSUED.
\n[…]<\/p>\n

=====<\/p>\n

FXHW60 PHFO 140152
\nAFDHFO<\/p>\n

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
\nNATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI
\n330 PM HST MON OCT 13 2014
\n[…]
\nTHE SUMMITS OF THE BIG ISLAND HAVE BEGUN TO REPORT SNOWFALL ACCUMULATION…AND THIS WILL CONTINUE WITH A COUPLE OF INCHES POSSIBLE OVERNIGHT.
\n[…]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While examining a nighttime (11:21 UTC or 1:21 am local time) comparison of AWIPS II images of Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00b5m Day\/Night Band (DNB) and 11.45 \u00b5m IR channel data covering Tropical Storm Ana (below),<\/strong><\/em> the main feature of interest was the inner core of cloud-top IR brightness temperatures as cold as -86\u00ba C (yellow color enhancement)<\/em> associated with Ana — however, equally interesting was the appearance of a pair of bright white features in the middle of the Big Island on the DNB image (which highlighted the areas of snow cover that remained at the higher elevations).<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00b5m Day\/Night Band and 11.45 \u00b5m IR channel images<\/p><\/div>\n

A closer view comparing the VIIRS DNB and IR images centered over the Big Island (below)<\/strong><\/em> seemed to suggest that the 2 patches of bright snow cover (well-illuminated by a nearly Full Moon) were located along the western slopes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. A similar comparison of the DNB image and high-resolution topography can be seen here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00b5m Day\/Night Band and 11.45 \u00b5m IR channel images<\/p><\/div>\n

An animation of GOES-15 0.63 \u00b5m visible channel images during the following daylight hours of 14 October (below; click image to play animation)<\/strong><\/em> revealed the gradual melting of the 2 patches of high-elevation snow cover as temperatures rose from around freezing into the 50s F near the summits (Cooperative observations<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 0.63 \u00b5m visible channel images (click to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McIDAS images of GOES-15 (GOES-West) 6.5 \u00b5m water vapor channel data (above; click image to play animation) showed an upper-level low that moved from east to west over the Hawaiian Islands during the 13 October – 14 October 2014 period. This low forced the development of widespread showers and thunderstorms, especially over the Big Island […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":17011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,43,49,48,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awips-ii","category-goes-15","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs","category-winter-weather"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17005","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=17005"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17017,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17005\/revisions\/17017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}