VISIT: Meteorological Interpretation Blog

On the morning of 6 November 2024, the Mountain Fire erupted, and fueled by strong winds, the fire spread southwestward towards cities located along the California coastline. The GOES-18 GeoColor product (see below) observed the fire and the corresponding smoke plumes from ~18-21Z, 6 November 2024. The narrow, long, smoke plumes advected westward offshore and Continue Reading

Over the past few weeks, fires have erupted and spewed high concentrations of smoke over western Canada and the United States. To exacerbate the situation, more fires initiated recently in the western U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) highlighted the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) – Smoke products on social media to warn Continue Reading

Another summer and another round of wildfires and smoke that inundate the Canadian provinces and territories. From 19-21Z, 17 July 2024, VIIRS GeoColor observed the smoke and fires extending from British Columbia to Hudson Bay. A daytime animation of VIIRS overpasses from SNPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 can be seen below.   At ~09Z 18 July Continue Reading

In complement to the NOAA-20 NUCAPS soundings, National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters now have access to another set of satellite-derived soundings from the European Metop-C satellite in AWIPS-II. As of 11 March 2024, the Metop-C NUCAPS soundings are accessible via Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) across the CONUS (and globally). The Metop-C soundings provide mid-morning overpasses Continue Reading

Another atmospheric river event impacted the Pacific Northwest (PNW), earlier this week. Plumes of moisture moved into the region that led to heavy precipitation and flooding for the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. 24-hour precipitation totals from Monday, 4 December through Tuesday, 5 December 2023 were quite impressive over western Washington. Additionally, the Seattle-Tacoma Continue Reading

As of early November 2023, the TOWR-S RPM v24 has been released for National Weather Service (NWS) users to update their local AWIPS terminals with the latest satellite data capabilities. Within the RPM v24 release, more NWS CONUS users will be able to access the Snowfall Rate (SFR) and the merged SFR (satellite plus radar) Continue Reading

This summer 2023, NOAA-21 VIIRS Near-Constant Contrast (NCC) imagery has become available for National Weather Service (NWS) users to access in the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System – II (AWIPS-II) via the Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN). With the addition of NOAA-21 VIIRS NCC, users can now access the nighttime visible imagery from three JPSS polar-orbiting Continue Reading

Need a new satellite product to observe flooding? Look no further than the VIIRS Flood Map product. The VIIRS Flood Map calculates the flood extent of a 375-m pixel (i.e., known as the floodwater fraction percentage from 0 to 100%, displayed in green-to-red colors). The product also differentiates between scene types (e.g., cloud cover, bare Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading