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27 October 2017
The Important Weather Satellite You Haven’t Heard Of
The satellite images you see on TV every day are usually from the new GOES-16 which is way up there, at a tenth of the distance to the Moon! But there are other weather satellites you probably don’t know about in polar orbit that are just as important. These satellites have instruments that can measure winds/ temperatures and moisture at many different levels as they fly over the poles, and …
26 September 2017
Satellites Show the Lack of Power In Puerto Rico as a Catastrophe Unfolds.
The images and pleas for help coming from Puerto Rico are heartbreaking and increasingly alarming. Media reports this evening are saying that 80% of the island’s crops have been destroyed. Only those with generators have power and mobile signals are sparse and intermittent. Up to 60% of people have no reliable access to clean water, and frankly, I can see no signs that much is being done about it! I …
12 April 2017
NASA Releases New Black Marble Image
The Suomi Satellite MODIS VIIRS (my mistake- sorry. Terra and Aqua have the MODIS) sensor can see city lights very well when there are no clouds but it’s a polar orbiting satellite so it only passes by one time at night. If you want to grab a shot of the entire planet’s night lights from space, it will take you a while to find a clear night in areas where there are a …
16 March 2017
The Controversial Northeast Snow Cover in Living Color
This is an image with 1 km resolution, and if you click on the image you can get a much larger version. You can see the Susquehanna River clearly and the lack of snow near the coast as the warmer ocean air changed the snow to rain. You can download a 500-meter resolution image here. The snow forecast near the coast was very tricky and there has been some controversy …
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.
6 May 2016
Smoke from Alberta Wildfire Reaches Florida
The image below is also from the Aqua satellite on Friday and the smoke from the fires is clearly visible. The Suomi Satellite has an imager capable of night time images and the CIMMS Satellite blog at the Uni. of Wisconsin just posted this image from Suomi: Looking at the forecast, it looks like a cool front will bring some rain later Sunday, but amounts will be light, and winds …
25 January 2016
Suomi Sees the Snow
This image form the Suomi Satellite on Sunday afternoon. Snowfall for the storm is below: There is talk today among climate researchers (and synoptic meteorologists like me) about how climate change may be causing these Eastern Seaboard blizzards to be worse, and the very warm waters off the coast with this storm were definitely a factor in this one. See Chris Mooney’s piece in the Washington Post.
24 January 2016
A Storm That Will Be Remembered for Generations
Some are calling it Snowzilla, and having experienced it, the name fits! From DC to Baltimore, and up to New York have over 2 feet. Here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, it varies but a foot is common in Central and Northern Delaware and near Denton in Maryland. On the coast, major coastal flooding has caused significant damage. I shot the image above (from the WBOC Ocean City Maryland …
9 September 2015
Amazing View of North America at Night with the Aurora as Well
The Suomi Satellite continues to give us amazing pictures of our planet. hat tip to CIMMS for the image.
10 June 2015
The U.S. Is About To Almost Catch Up to Japan and Europe With GOES-R Satellite
I spent the day in a short course on weather satellites here in Raleigh,NC today. The course is part of the 43rd AMS Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, and I was invited to present a talk about some experimental products I evaluated at the NOAA Hazardous Weather Test-Bed last June. We spent the day looking at exactly what the GOES-R will be able to see, and what each of the visible …
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.