VISIT: Meteorological Interpretation Blog

Storm-relative animations for right-moving and left-moving storms

This blog entry will compare traditional satellite animations of right-moving and left-moving storms with storm-relative animations as observed by GOES-16 visible imagery in AWIPS with the Feature Following Zoom tool.  Also, comparisons will be made between different temporal resolutions, that is, AWIPS CONUS 5-minute versus mesoscale 1-minute sectors.

We will start with the traditional satellite animation which is for the 0.64 micron visible band CONUS sector (5-minute):

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas1_conus_non-sr&loop_speed_ms=60

In the eastern Texas panhandle, we observe a storm that turns right (towards the southeast) as it intensifies.  Meanwhile, in the northeast Texas panhandle into the Oklahoma panhandle we see a left-moving storm moving northeastward that appears to be moving faster than the right-moving storm.

Compare the animation with a storm-relative animation centered on the right-moving storm (CONUS sector):

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas1_conus_sr&loop_speed_ms=60

and also compare with a storm-relative animation centered on the left-moving storm (CONUS sector):

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas2_conus_sr&loop_speed_ms=90

How does the storm-relative animation affect your interpretation of the satellite imagery?  What can you see more effectively in the storm-relative animations?

Fortunately, on this day a Mesoscale sector covered the region of interest, allowing us to make further comparisons with 1-minute temporal resolution imagery.

First, the traditional satellite animation for the Mesoscale sector:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas1_meso_non-sr&loop_speed_ms=20\

Compare the animation with a storm-relative animation centered on the right-moving storm (Mesoscale sector):

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas1_meso_sr&loop_speed_ms=20

and also compare with a storm-relative animation centered on the left-moving storm (Mesoscale sector):

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/29may18/texas/texas2_meso_sr&loop_speed_ms=20

How does the storm-relative animation affect your interpretation of the satellite imagery?  What can you see more effectively in the storm-relative animations?

Summary:

The storm-relative animations definitely allow the user to more effectively analyze features at cloud top (overshooting tops, cloud motions, gravity waves). Features in the vicinity of the storm may be viewed more efficiently as well (clouds moving into the storm, such as potential inflow feeder clouds).  Also, the storm motion relative to a boundary can be visualized more readily.  This can be particularly useful in situations where you are monitoring storms that may go more parallel or perpendicular to a boundary with obvious consequences on storm intensity.

Storm speed can be seen in a relative sense as well, in this case we adjusted the loop speeds to make them look more favorable, but you may change the loop speed so that they are all the same to prove to yourself how much faster the left-moving storm is moving relative the right-moving storm.  At the end of the URL, the loop_speed_ms= parameter can be edited to your preference, see what effects the same number (i.e., loop_speed_ms=20) has.