{"id":64719,"date":"2025-05-08T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=64719"},"modified":"2025-05-12T02:57:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T02:57:39","slug":"wildfire-in-saskatchewan-produces-a-pyrocumulonimbus-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/64719","title":{"rendered":"Wildfire in Saskatchewan produces a pyrocumulonimbus cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

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GOES-19 \u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m, top), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m, center) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m, bottom) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-19 (GOES-East)<\/em> \u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m) images (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed that a wildfire in central Saskatchewan produced a pyrocumulonimbus<\/strong><\/a> (pyroCb) cloud on 08 May 2025<\/strong><\/a> (this was the first documented pyroCb of the 2025 North America wildfire season). The pyroCb exhibited cloud-top 10.3 \u00b5m infrared brightness temperatures (IRBTs) in the -40s C (denoted by shades of blue to cyan), a necessary condition to be classified as a pyroCb.<\/p>\n

The coldest pyroCb cloud-top 10.3 \u00b5m IRBT was -47.7\u00baC — which was slightly colder than the air temperature of the Maximum Parcel Level (MPL) analyzed from rawinsonde data at The Pas, Manitoba (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Plot of rawinsonde data from The Pas, Manitoba at 0000 UTC on 09 May [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>GOES-19 Visible + Fire Mask and Infrared images (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed that the pyroCb developed as a cold front was passing through a small cluster of wildfires; surface air temperatures at nearby METAR sites were as warm as 86\u00baF, with wind gusts as high as 37 kts (43 mph).<\/p>\n

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GOES-19 Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) + Fire Mask derived product (top) and Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m, bottom) images, from 2000 UTC on 08 May to 0000 UTC on 09 May [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>A plot of surface observation data from Nipawin (station identifier CYBU) showed that after the cold frontal passage, smoke from the nearby pyroCb-producing wildfire reduced the surface visibility to 2-3miles at times (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Plot of surface observation data at Nipawin, Saskatchewan [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-19 (GOES-East) \u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m) images (above) showed that a wildfire in central Saskatchewan produced a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud on 08 May 2025 (this was the first documented pyroCb of the 2025 North America wildfire season). The pyroCb exhibited cloud-top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":64724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-quality","category-fire-detection","category-goes-19"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64719","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=64719"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65045,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64719\/revisions\/65045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}