Storm Prediction Center storm reports for the 24 hours ending 1200 UTC on 30 April 2025 show a line of strong wind reports from the mid-Mississippi River valley east-northeastward into central Pennsylvania.

What satellite products could have been useful on 29 April to anticipate the arrival of these strong winds? The animation below shows Derived Lifted Index (a clear-sky only product) values plotted on top of visible imagery. Lifted Index values between -2 and -5 are widespread through much of the animation over western Pennsylvania. Convection moving in from the west will be able to access this instability.

NUCAPS profiles were also available over Pennsylvania in a cluster from 1500-1800 UTC, as shown in the animation below. The ‘Sounding Availability Plot’ includes more than one overpass, and selected profiles are shown over central Pennsylvania. Of particular note is the region in very rural Clearfield County where three profiles were sensed over the course of 3 hours! It’s worth repeating that the NUCAPS points are actually a volume of air, a tube about 50km in diameter that matches the ATMS footprint. Considerable destabilization is diagnosed over the three hours. Based on these profiles, a forecaster observing the severe weather reports upstream might not suspect that incoming convection will weaken. (Here’s an animation of just the three profiles over rural Clearfield County).

Clean window infrared imagery, below, spanning from 1900 UTC on 29 April through 0300 UTC on 30 April 2025, shows that coldest cloud tops warmed as the convection moved into central Pennsylvania. However, widespread power outages were reported, as shown here from this source.

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Were the power outages caused by the storms visible in the Day Night band, similar to this event in Spain? The toggle below compares Day Night Band imagery from early morning on the 29th (before the storms) and early morning on the 30th (just after the storms). It’s hard to tell for sure because a lot of the changes in illumination on 30 April are due to the thick cloud cover from the storms.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed thunderstorms that produced giant hail (as large as 5.00 inches in diameter) and damaging wind gusts (as high as 106 mph) across the Texas Panhandle and North Texas (SPC Storm Reports) on 29 April 2025. The Infrared images revealed pulses of thunderstorm overshooting tops that exhibited 10.3 µm brightness temperatures as cold as -78ºC (brighter white pixels embedded within dark black regions) — and the signature of an Above-Anvil Cirrus Plume (reference) was evident in Visible imagery (although the warmer AACP signature was less distinct in the lower-resolution Infrared images).

According to a plot of rawinsonde data (source) from Fort Worth, Texas at 0000 UTC on 30 April (below), the coldest GOES-19 cloud-top infrared brightness temperature of -78ºC represented a ~1.5 km overshoot of the Most Unstable air parcel Equilibrium Level (MU EL).

GOES-19 Visible images with plots of GLM Flash Points (below) displayed abundant lightning activity associated with these supercell thunderstorms — which were generally focused in the vicinity of a quasi-stationary frontal boundary.

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Power outages over the Iberian Peninsula on 28-29 April 2025 have caused wide-spread travel (and life) disruptions (Reuters link). Day Night Band imagery from the NASA Worldview Site (link), shown below, show a reduction in city lights especially over southern Spain on the 29th. The NOAA-20 overpass on 29 April was shortly after 0140 UTC. Skies at that time were mostly clear over southern Spain

The 3-day animation below includes imagery from 27 April as well.

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When NOAA-20 overflew Spain early on 30 April, Day Night Band imagery did not show widespread outages, as shown below.

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5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) daytime True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) provided a distinct view of widespread blowing dust that had its primary source regions in northern Mexico and southern New Mexico on 27 April 2025. Peak wind gusts were as high as 50 knots at Deming NM and 46 knots at El Paso TX. After sunset, Dust RGB images highlighted the airborne dust (shades of magenta) as it was transported northeastward as far as southeast Colorado and southwest Kansas by 0601 UTC on 28 April. In addition, a few wildfires across northern Mexico and central New Mexico were producing notable smoke plumes prior to sunset.

A longer animation of 10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-19 Dust RGB images (below) showed that the leading edge of airborne dust had advanced as far northeastward as Nebraska by 0900 UTC on 28 April, and northwestern Wisconsin and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan by 2110 UTC on 28 April.

HYSPLIT Model forward trajectories initialized near the dust source regions in far northern Mexico (below) indicated that the dust-laden air parcels likely ascended to altitudes of 4.0 to 6.5 km by the time they passed over Wisconsin and Michigan by 0000 UTC on 29 April — which was in good agreement with what was observed in the longer animation of GOES-19 Dust RGB images.

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