![\"GOES-15](\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2017\/01\/170106_goes15_visible_Utah_black_cloud_anim.gif\")
<\/a>GOES-15 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images, with hourly surface reports [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>GOES-15 (GOES-West)<\/em> Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed a small, short-lived black cloud that formed south\/southwest of Vernal (station identifier KVEL)<\/em> in northeastern Utah on 06 January 2017<\/strong><\/a>. This feature was the result of a fire at an oil well site (media report<\/strong><\/a> | well location<\/strong><\/a>) that apparently started around 11:30 am local time (1830 UTC); the black cloud from the burning oil tanks — which was first apparent on the 1930 UTC visible image — stood out well against the snow-covered ground. The initial northwestward transport of the smoke plume was consistent with lower-tropospheric winds in Grand Junction, Colorado rawinsonde data<\/strong><\/a> at 07 January\/00 UTC, which showed southeasterly winds as high as 784 hPa (2185 meters or 7169 feet above ground level). The sounding profile also showed that this height was the top of a well-defined temperature inversion, which acted as a cap to prevent the smoke from reaching higher altitudes (photo<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n GOES-13 (GOES-East)<\/em> Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images (below)<\/strong><\/em> also displayed the dark smoke plume. The viewing angles from the 2 satellites were similar (~53 degrees from GOES-15 vs ~57 degrees from GOES-13), but the time sampling was slightly better from GOES-15 (due to the extra “SUB-CONUS” scan images at :11 and :41 minutes nearly every hour). Image frequency will be even better with the GOES-R<\/strong><\/a> series of satellites (beginning with GOES-16), with routine scans every 5 minutes; the visible image spatial resolution will also be improved (to 0.5 km, vs 1.0 km with the current GOES).<\/p>\n GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images, with hourly surface reports [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>MODIS Visible<\/strong><\/a> (0.645 \u00b5m), Shortwave Infrared<\/strong><\/a> (3.7 \u00b5m) and Infrared Window<\/strong><\/a> (11.0 \u00b5m) images from a 2036 UTC overpass<\/strong><\/a> of the Aqua satellite (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed the black smoke cloud in the Visible, but there was no evidence of a fire “hot spot” in the Shortwave Infrared (the media report indicated that the fire was extinguished about 2 hours after it started, which would have been around or just before the time of the MODIS images). On the Infrared Window<\/strong><\/a> image, the smoke plume actually did exhibit a slightly colder (darker blue color enhancement)<\/em> signature, which is unusual since conventional fire and wildfire smoke is normally transparent to thermal radiation.<\/p>\n<\/a>