VISIT: Meteorological Interpretation Blog

By Dan Bikos and Sheldon Kusselson Hurricane Fiona underwent a transition from a tropical cyclone to an extra-tropical cyclone on 23-24 September 2022.  The resulting extra-tropical cyclone was very intense and led to significant storm surge, wind damage and heavy rain in southeast Canada centered on Nova Scotia. The Advected Layer Precipitable Water loop does an Continue Reading

By Sheldon Kusselson ALPW loop of 2019 event: ALPW loop of 2017 event:

A nor’easter occurred on 7 March 2018 which resulted in heavy snow, strong winds and rain across portions of the Northeast U.S.  In this blog entry we’ll examine the performance of the NSSL WRF-ARW via synthetic water vapor imagery in relation to the cyclogenesis aspects. The following 4 panel display: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/7mar18/synthetic_goes_compare/&loop_speed_ms=60 shows the following: Upper Continue Reading

GOES-16 imagery captured the spectacular explosive cyclogenesis event on the eastern seaboard on 4 January.  First, we’ll look at the 3 GOES-16 water vapor channels along with the air mass RGB product: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/4jan18/4panel_wv&loop_speed_ms=60 During this loop we see an instant occlusion type of cyclogenesis.  We also see the development of a sting jet, annotated on Continue Reading

The synthetic IR (10.35 um) imagery from the 0000 UTC 5 March 2013 NSSL WRF-ARW run: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/6mar13_syn_wrf&image_width=1020&image_height=900 forecasts a region of colder cloud tops from the Ohio Valley towards the mid-Atlantic states during the late afternoon to morning hours of March 6.  This region of colder cloud tops is associated with an extra-tropical cyclone, so Continue Reading