{"id":70083,"date":"2026-04-20T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=70083"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:59:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:59:31","slug":"standing-wave-cloud-over-the-north-shoreline-of-saginaw-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/70083","title":{"rendered":"Standing wave cloud over the north shoreline of Saginaw Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

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5-minute GOES-19 Visible images (top left), Infrared images (top right), Mid-level Water Vapor images (bottom left) and Upper-level Water Vapor images (bottom right), from 1951 UTC on 20 April to 0001 UTC on 21 April; hourly surface wind barbs are plotted in white [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)<\/em>\u00a0imagery (above)<\/em><\/strong> revealed the brief development of what appeared to be a standing wave cloud — caused by a vertically-propagating gravity wave — that was anchored near the north coast of Saginaw Bay, Michigan on 20 April 2026<\/strong><\/a>. At first glance, this author was reminded of similar-appearing standing wave clouds that form along the Minnesota coast of Lake Superior<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A toggle between GOES-19 images and Topography (below)<\/em><\/strong> seemed to show that the northwestern edge of the cloud feature lined up with the final (subtle) drop in topography near the coast — however, since there was not the strong NW offshore surface wind flow common to the aforementioned Minnesota example, perhaps the onshore (and slightly upslope) lake breeze played a role in vertical gravity wave initiation? Until a sound explanation rooted in science is stumbled upon, this event will fall into the coveted “What the heck is this?” blog post category.<\/p>\n

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GOES-19 Visible\/Infrared\/Water Vapor images at 2136 UTC on 20 April, compared with Topography; Surface Wind barbs are plotted in white [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)\u00a0imagery (above) revealed the brief development of what appeared to be a standing wave cloud — caused by a vertically-propagating gravity wave — that was anchored near the north coast of Saginaw Bay, Michigan on 20 April 2026. At first glance, this author was reminded of similar-appearing standing wave clouds that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":70085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,159,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interpretation","category-goes-19","category-what-the-heck-is-this"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70083","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=70083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70087,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70083\/revisions\/70087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}