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28 September 2017
New GOES-16 Weather Satellite Will Be Turned Off for 14 Days
GOES-16 will become the new GOES-EAST satellite late this year as the old GOES-13 is retired. We knew this move was coming but NOAA has just announced the details of the move. Currently, the new GOES-16 is over the equator south of the central U.S. At this checkout location, it can just barely see the edge of Africa, but it gives very good coverage to the western U.S. Once the …
26 August 2017
Astounding Model Output Leads to Forecasts We Meteorologists Never Thought We Would Make
I’ve forecasted the weather for 37 years and I’ve never seen consistent model output forecasting rainfall amounts of over 30 inches before. Astounding and astonishing are the only words I can use to describe what I’ve been seeing from the numerical models. Not only that, but it’s the same with nearly every usually reliable model. Could all of the models be wrong? Could this storm fizzle rather quickly once it …
4 May 2017
Looking at Lightning From On High! The GLM Works!
The new GOES-16 weather satellite has something no geostationary weather satellite has ever had before. An instrument that can see lightning. In real time. It’s called the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM for short), and while we have been seeing some real time images from GOES-16 for over a month now, the GLM is still being checked out. Today, NASA and Lockheed released some new video of the GLM in action …
6 March 2017
First Images from the GOES-16 Lightning Mapper
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) is working. This instrument will likely be a revolutionary advance in severe storm forecasting and warnings and can measure the total lightning in storms. Current lightning data sees cloud to ground strokes, but these coordinate poorly with severe weather. Research shows that total lightning does correlate well with severe weather and can significantly increase lead times and it will likely reduce false alarms as well. I was …
3 March 2017
GOES-16 Loop of Fires in SE Texas
More and more GOES-16 data is coming out as it is calibrated and tested. Look at the images below of fires to the southeast of the Dallas area. There is one image every 5 minutes, but GOES-16 (Launched as GOES-R) can return imagery every 30 seconds.
24 February 2017
Why GOES-16 Is Such A Big Deal
I put this piece together about GOES-16 and it aired today. Hat tip to my excellent editor Kevin Reynolds here at WBOC-TV.
14 February 2017
New GOES-16 Weather Satellite Sees Monday’s Low Pressure Bomb
I wrote yesterday about the storm that exploded off the coast of the Mid-Atlantic on Monday, and now you can see it develop from GOES-16. This animation was released today of the storm exploding as it moved out to sea. This explosive cyclogenesis produced hurricane force winds in the Atlantic, and winds over 50 mph on the coast from Maryland to Boston. This view is one of the three water vapour …
29 January 2017
Japan’s Himawari 9 First Images Released
Japan has had a 16 channel Advanced Baseline Imager in orbit since 2014 and this new satellite is a backup for the Himawari 8 that is still providing good imagery. We now have advanced satellites over Europe and one over America. When GOES-S is launched in two? years, we’ll have very high temporal and spatial resolution from Europe to Asia! The Himawari has sensors for red, green, and blue …
26 January 2017
All The Light We Cannot See
One image in 16 different wavelengths of light from NOAA’s new weather satellite GOES-16 (GOES-R at launch). The upper left is the blue visible light wavelength. Next is Red. Next is near IR, not visible to our eyes, but very sensitive to vegetation. This near-IR channel is very valuable because you can do some software tricks and use it as a green channel to get a colour image. The other …
23 January 2017
GOES-16 First Images/Animations Released
The GOES-R (Now named GOES-16) satellite is working! NOAA released the first images and animations today. The satellite is still in the test stage and will be for months but we should start seeing non-operational data by May. The image above is a high-resolution full disc shot. Below are some short loops from the ABI sensor. The colour images are made from a blue light channel and a red light …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.