{"id":9435,"date":"2011-12-26T06:59:26","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T06:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=9435"},"modified":"2011-12-27T04:26:11","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T04:26:11","slug":"mountain-waves-and-banner-clouds-over-wyoming-and-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/9435","title":{"rendered":"Mountain waves and banner clouds over Wyoming and Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 (GOES-West) and GOES-13 (GOES-East) 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel images (click image to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n

Strong winds aloft associated with a cyclonically-curved jet streak<\/a><\/strong> over the Northern Rocky Mountains were responsible for a number of mountain waves and lee “banner clouds” over parts of Wyoming and Montana on 25 December – 26 December 2011<\/strong>. A side-by-side comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West)<\/em> and GOES-13 (GOES-East)<\/em> 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel images (above; click image to play animation)<\/em><\/strong> revealed some interesting differences in the appearance of these mountain waves. Note that the images are displayed in the native projection of their respective satellites.<\/p>\n

A comparison of the GOES-15 and GOES-13 imager 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel weighting functions<\/a><\/strong> (below)<\/em><\/strong> showed that the satellite viewing angles (or satellite zenith angles) were very close — 56.41 degrees for GOES-15, and 59.95 degrees for GOES-13 — and the weighting function profiles were nearly identical. However, the fact that GOES-15 was viewing the region from the west allowed it to better resolve the warm\/dry signatures (yellow color enhancement)<\/em> of the most pronounced sinking regions associated with some of the stronger mountain waves. These warm\/dry subsidence signatures were possibly masked by the high-altitude lee banner clouds when viewed from the east with GOES-13.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 vs GOES-13 water vapor channel weighting function profiles<\/p><\/div>\n

At 00:40 UTC there was one pilot report of brief moderate turbulence at an altitude of 37,000 feet near the Wind River Range<\/a><\/strong> in west-central Wyoming (below)<\/em><\/strong>. Only a lee banner cloud was evident on the GOES water vapor imagery at that particular time, but a few hours later the warm\/dry signature of strong mountain wave subsidence started to become more distinct over that location.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-13<\/a>

GOES-13 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel image + pilot report of turbulence<\/p><\/div>\n

Had higher spatial resolution water vapor imagery been available closer to the 00:40 UTC time of the turbulence encounter, perhaps a more distinct mountain wave signature might have been apparent. For example, a comparison of 1-km resolution MODIS 6.7 \u00c2\u00b5m and 4-km resolution GOES-13 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor images at 05:01 UTC (below)<\/em><\/strong> demonstrated the advantage of improved spatial resolution water vapor imagery for identifying subtle mountain wave signatures across the region. <\/p>\n

\"MODIS<\/a>

MODIS 6.7 \u00c2\u00b5m and GOES-13 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel images<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strong winds aloft associated with a cyclonically-curved jet streak over the Northern Rocky Mountains were responsible for a number of mountain waves and lee “banner clouds” over parts of Wyoming and Montana on 25 December – 26 December 2011. A side-by-side comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West) and GOES-13 (GOES-East) 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor channel images (above; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,11,43,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-goes-13","category-goes-15","category-modis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9435","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=9435"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9438,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9435\/revisions\/9438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}