{"id":68644,"date":"2026-01-26T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=68644"},"modified":"2026-01-27T04:29:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:29:48","slug":"tehuano-wind-event-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/68644","title":{"rendered":"Tehuano gap wind event"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div style=\"width: 2992px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_goes19_nearInfrared_Tehuano.mp4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_1550utc_g19_nir_ascat.png\" width=\"2982\" height=\"1662\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">10-minute GOES-19 Near-Infrared images with plots of Metop-C ASCAT winds, surface fronts and METAR surface reports, from 1240-2300 UTC on 26 January [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>As a strong arctic cold front moved southward across the Gulf of Mexico toward southern Mexico on 25-26 January 2026, the cold front fractured as it moved inland across Mexico&#8217;s Isthmus of Tehuantepec \u2014 the cold air was then channeled southward through Chivela Pass and emerged as a Tehuano (or \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tehuantepecer\"><strong>Tehuantepecer<\/strong><\/a>\u201c) gap wind that eventually fanned outward across the Gulf of Tehuantepec and adjacent Pacific Ocean. 10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-19 <em>(GOES-East)<\/em> Near-Infrared images <em><strong>(above)<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0showed the hazy plume of dust that was being transported offshore \u2014 along with a narrow arc cloud that marked the southern and eastern edges of this Tehuano flow.<\/p>\n<p>A topography image (<em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0also showed Metop-B ASCAT winds emerging from the southern coast of Mexico, after the gap winds had accelerated through Chivela Pass; wind speeds were as high as 37 kts. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhc.noaa.gov\/abouttafb.shtml\"><strong>Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch<\/strong><\/a> had issued a polygon where Storm Force winds were likely over the Gulf of Tehuantepec.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 2992px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_topo.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_topo.png\" width=\"2982\" height=\"1662\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Topography image, with Metop-B ASCAT wind barbs (having speeds of 34-47 kts) valid at 1557 UTC plotted in cyan [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A toggle between Metop-B ASCAT and OSCAT-3 surface scatterometer images <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em> depicted the pulse of Tehuano winds off the Pacific coast of Mexico.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 750px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_metopB_ascat_oscat3_anim.gif\" width=\"740\" height=\"650\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Metop-B ASCAT winds at 1557 UTC and OSCAT-3 winds at 1849 UTC on 26 January<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In a side-by-side comparison of Nighttime Microphysics RGB and daytime True Color RGB images from GOES-18 <em>(GOES-West) <\/em>and GOES-19 <em>(GOES-East)<\/em>\u00a0sourced from the <a href=\"https:\/\/geosphere.ssec.wisc.edu\/#playing:true;coordinate:0,0;num_frames:41;\"><strong>CSPP GeoSphere<\/strong><\/a> site <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>, a large pulse of airborne dust was seen emerging from Mexico&#8217;s Pacific coast and spreading south-southwest across the Gulf of Tehuantepec.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1506px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/260126_goes18_goes19_trueColorRGB_Tehuano.mp4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/01\/goeswest_abi_radf_true_color_night_s20260126070021_e20260126230021_f97.mp4_combined_horizontally_with_goeseast_abi_radf_true_color_night_s20260126070021_e20260126230021_f97.mp4_fr000097.png\" width=\"1496\" height=\"738\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">10-minute Nighttime Microphysics RGB and daytime True Color RGB images from GOES-18 (left) and GOES-19 (right), from 0700-2300 UTC on 26 January [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a strong arctic cold front moved southward across the Gulf of Mexico toward southern Mexico on 25-26 January 2026, the cold front fractured as it moved inland across Mexico&#8217;s Isthmus of Tehuantepec \u2014 the cold air was then channeled southward through Chivela Pass and emerged as a Tehuano (or \u201cTehuantepecer\u201c) gap wind that eventually [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":68646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,159,58,45,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goes-18","category-goes-19","category-metop","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-satellite-winds"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68644","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=68644"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68654,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68644\/revisions\/68654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}