![](\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/09\/250920_1301z_wv.png\")
<\/a>5-minute GOES-19 Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 \u00b5m) images, with Pilot Reports of turbulence plotted in red, from 0946-1501 on 20 September [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>Transverse cirrus bands<\/strong><\/a> — narrow cirrus cloud filaments oriented perpendicular to the mean wind flow at the altitude of those cloud features — have long been recognized as indicators of potential aircraft turbulence. Such was the case on 20 September 2025, when a Mesoscale Convective System over Kansas\/Oklahoma began to exhibit transverse banding along its northern to eastern periphery as it moved eastward toward the mid-Mississippi Valley (above)<\/strong><\/em>. Several high-altitude pilot reports of light to moderate turbulence were seen in the area of transverse banding.<\/p>\n A stepped comparison of GOES-19 Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m), Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 \u00b5m), Near-Infrared Cirrus (1.37 \u00b5m) and Red Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images at 1301 UTC (below)<\/em><\/strong> showed that the transverse cirrus bands were best visualized using the Near-Infrared Cirrus and Water Vapor (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Infrared) imagery — the presence low- to mid-level clouds tended to mask the appearance of some of the thin high-altitude cirrus bands.<\/p>\n GOES-19 Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m), Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 \u00b5m), Near-Infrared Cirrus (1.37 \u00b5m) and Red Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images at 1301 UTC on 20 September, with Pilot Reports of turbulence plotted in red [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>Transverse cirrus bands are also occasionally observed near the axis of strong jet streaks<\/strong><\/a> and around the periphery of tropical cyclones<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Transverse cirrus bands — narrow cirrus cloud filaments oriented perpendicular to the mean wind flow at the altitude of those cloud features — have long been recognized as indicators of potential aircraft turbulence. Such was the case on 20 September 2025, when a Mesoscale Convective System over Kansas\/Oklahoma began to exhibit transverse banding along its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":66920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation","category-goes-19"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66919","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=66919"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66939,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66919\/revisions\/66939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/09\/250920_1301utc_goes19_infrared_waterVapor_nearInfraredCirrus_visible_MCS_transverse_banding_anim.gif\"){kind=spacer}
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