On this page: GOES-16/East operational | GOES-16 pre-operational
Shocking! Within this cluster of storms, a single lightning bolt captured by NOAA's GOES-16 (GOES East) satellite in April 2020 was recently certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the world’s longest flash on record with a distance of 477 miles. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
View additional GOES-16 imagery through the following websites:
GOES-16 (GOES East) monitored a severe weather outbreak in the Southern U.S. March 17-18, 2021, which spawned at least 15 confirmed tornados that brought down homes and trees and left tens of thousands without power. Mississippi and Alabama were the hardest hit with several tornados being reported, including near Waynesboro, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The powerful storm then moved eastward and affected portions of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. GOES-16 air mass imagery with Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) overlay shows a significant amount of lightning within these storms. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) captured this time-lapsed imagery of the largest iceberg in the world floating in the southern Atlantic Ocean over a three-week period from Nov. 17 through Dec. 7, 2020. This imagery utilizes the day snow/cloud layers data product, which combines six different bands on the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) to help distinguish clouds from snow and ice. By doing this, the iceberg/snow appear white, low moisture-rich clouds appear yellowish-green, and high cirrus clouds appear pink. Named A-68A, the iceberg is roughly 130 miles off the island of South Georgia’s coast. It originally broke off (“calved”) from the Larsen-C Ice Shelf in Antarctica on July 12, 2017, and was roughly the size of the city of Juneau, Alaska. More than three years later, it is still considered the largest iceberg despite shrinking in size. Download Video Credit: NOAA
The record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30. It had a record 30 named storms—from Arthur to Iota—and was the record fifth consecutive above-normal season. Thirteen storms hit the U.S. coastline; five of which came ashore in Louisiana. This satellite animation is from NOAA's GOES-16 (GOES-East) and runs from May 13 through Nov. 18, 2020. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Hurricane Iota, the 30th named storm and the 13th Atlantic hurricane of 2020, rapidly intensified into a Category 5 hurricane on Nov. 16, 2020, with maximum sustained winds near 160 mph. Iota is the strongest Atlantic hurricane of the season to date and the latest in the calendar year that a Category 5 hurricane has developed on record. Iota made landfall along the northeastern coast of Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane on Nov. 16, 2020, just south of where Eta came ashore less than two weeks prior. This GOES-16 (GOES-East) visible and lightning imagery shows Category 5 Iota on Nov. 16. Lightning activity in the eye of a hurricane, as seen in this imagery, is often a sign of rapid intensification. 2020 is the 5th consecutive year in which at least one Category 5 hurricane formed in the Atlantic basin, and the first time since 1932 where a Category 5 storm formed in November. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) watched as Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores Alabama at 4:45 a.m. CDT on Sept. 16, 2020. Sally made landfall as a category 2 hurricane and brought hurricane-force winds over southeastern Alabama and the western portion of the Florida Panhandle and catastrophic flooding along portions of the north-central Gulf Coast. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
As GOES-16 (GOES-East) monitored Hurricane Laura the night of August 26, 2020, it zoomed in on the storm’s powerful eye. GOES-16 is providing data to forecasters every minute to track the storm in real time. Rapid scan imagery showing fine detail of a hurricane’s eye helps forecasters estimate the storm’s intensity. Laura made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, at 2:00 a.m. on August 27, 2020, as a category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) monitored major hurricane Laura as it approached the Gulf Coast on Aug. 26, 2020. GOES-16 is providing data to forecasters every minute to track the storm in real time. This rapid image frequency helps forecasters identify the movement of cloud features and provides greater confidence in estimating the center of the storm and its wind speeds. This “sandwich” imagery from the afternoon of Aug. 26 combines visible and infrared data from the satellite’s imager. During processing, the transparency of the infrared data is increased and laid on top of the visible data. The result is imagery that offers views of storm attributes in rich detail. The green, yellow, orange, and red areas in this animation show the temperatures of cloud tops within the hurricane. The dark red areas are colder cloud tops, which indicate areas of greater storm intensity. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Hurricane Laura rapidly intensified from a category 1 storm on Aug. 25, 2020 to a category 4 on Aug. 26. This GOES-16 (GOES-East) imagery shows the lightning activity in the storm during that rapid intensification. Research has shown that lightning can correlate with hurricane intensity changes. GOES-16 carries the first operational lightning mapper flown in geostationary orbit. This new capability is enhancing the observation of lightning activity in hurricanes, providing higher detection efficiency, including continuous observations of total lightning (in-cloud and cloud-to-ground), and better observations over oceans. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper, known as GLM, can help forecasters predict future hurricane rapid intensification up to 24 hours ahead of time. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) captured intense lightning activity within a powerful derecho that swept across the Midwest on August 10, 2020. The storm produced widespread damaging wind gusts, including numerous gusts over 74 mph and several over 90 mph in central Iowa. According to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center, the derecho tracked about 770 miles, from southeast South Dakota into Ohio in 14 hours. A derecho is a widespread straight-line windstorm caused by severe thunderstorms. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) monitored Hurricane Hanna as it approached the Texas coast on July 25, 2020, in this visible imagery with lightning overlay. On July 25, Hanna became the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. Hanna made landfall on Padre Island, Texas, on July 25 at 5 p.m. CDT with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph. Hanna made a second landfall at 7:15 p.m. in Kennedy County, Texas, again with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph. Tropical Storm Hanna became the earliest "H" storm on record since the satellite era began in 1966 when it formed in the Gulf of Mexico on July 23. The previous record was in 2005 when Harvey formed on August 3. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Tropical Storm Cristobal, the third named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, formed over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico on June 2, 2020. Cristobal set a record as the earliest incidence of a third named storm in the Atlantic basin. This GOES-16 (GOES-East) visible imagery with lightning overlay was captured on June 2. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
The GOES-16 (GOES-East) Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) observed two solar flares on the morning of May 29, 2020. This is the first significant solar activity since 2017, an indication the sun has entered a new solar cycle. However, it will take scientists several months to verify the sun has officially entered solar cycle 25. These flares are not likely to affect Earth due to their location at the limb (visible edge) of the sun, though the active region that produced them is just beginning to rotate into view and more active conditions may be on the way if the region keeps producing eruptions. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) true color RGB imagery on April 18, 2020 revealed the complex motion of ice eddies in the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, Canada. Download Video Credit: CIMSS
GOES-16 (GOES-East) captured visible imagery of colliding bores off the Texas coastline on April 20, 2020. An undular bore is a wave or waves in the atmosphere that can be seen on radar and sometimes by the clouds they produce. They form when an air mass, such as a storm outflow boundary, collides with another air mass characterized by cool, stable air. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) spied two supercell storms side-by-side over Texas on April 11, 2010, one of which is actually splitting into two. This occurs when there is strong vertical shear, since when winds change directions at various heights in the atmosphere, the top of the storm may move one way while the base will move with the prevailing winds along the ground. Upward moving air may allow new updrafts to form, and when the right conditions occur at the right time, the storm will split. Splitting storms can make predicting storm tracks difficult for forecasters. Additionally, split storms may merge with other existing storms, causing them to intensify and increase the chances of forming tornadoes. A series of severe thunderstorms brought torrential rain, destructive winds, and more than 400 severe weather reports along with roughly 40 tornado reports to the southern U.S. the weekend of April 11-12, 2020. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A powerful storm moved through Middle Tennessee in the early hours of March 3, 2020, spawning tornado activity that ripped through parts of Nashville and neighboring counties shortly before 1:00 a.m. CST. The storm caused heavy damage, killed at least 22 people, caused multiple injuries and left tens of thousands of people without power. GOES-16 (GOES-East) imagery and data products indicated a potentially dangerous storm with tornadoes likely, prior to forecasters issuing a tornado warning for the Nashville area. This imagery combines water vapor and infrared imagery from GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager and has Geostationary Lightning Mapper data overlaid. There was rapidly increasing lightning activity in this storm, which is an indication a storm may be strengthening. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
On March 2, 2020, GOES-16 (GOES-East) spotted ribbon-shaped cloud streets streaming over the Labrador Sea from the sea ice edge in the Davis Strait. As frigid air moves over relatively warmer water, the warmer air rises, bringing moisture with it. As it cools, it gradually condenses and sinks in rows of horizontal counterclockwise-rotating air cylinders that line up with the prevailing direction of the wind. As that wind sweeps around the southern tip of Greenland, the clouds are blown in a new direction, losing their “streamer” shape. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
On February 13, 2020, GOES-16 (GOES East) tracked bands of clouds streaming off Lake Superior. Very cold air flowing over the relatively warmer lake created these cloud streets that dropped lake effect snow across much of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
On January 13, 2020, GOES-16 (GOES East) viewed these mesmerizing trade wind cumulous clouds east of the Caribbean Islands via one-minute day cloud phase distinction RGB (red-green-blue) imagery. RGB imagery combines data from multiple channels of the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager. Here, water is black, low level clouds with high moisture content are cyan/lavender, and thick higher clouds with ice particles are yellow. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (GOES East) is tracking two areas of smoke on January 6, 2020, that originated with the Australian brushfires as it circumnavigates the earth. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service last reported that there are 136 fires, which continue to burn across New South Wales, 69 uncontained. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
On November 11, 2019, On November 11, 2019, the planet Mercury passed directly between the sun and Earth for approximately five and a half hours. The GOES-16 Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument tracked the transit in this time-lapse animation from 7:35 a.m. to 1:04 p.m. EST. During the transit, Mercury appeared as a tiny black dot moving across the sun. Transits of Mercury only happen about 13 times per century – the next transit will be in 2032 and in the U.S., the next opportunity to catch a Mercury transit is in 2049. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Severe thunderstorms rumbled across Texas the night of October 20-21, 2019, and produced three tornadoes across the Dallas region. A National Weather Service assessment found the damage consistent with an EF-3 tornado in North Dallas, an EF-1 tornado near Rowlett, and an EF-0 tornado North of Wills Point. This GOES-16 (GOES East) GeoColor imagery from Oct. 20-21 with Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) overlay shows the lightning activity in the storms that produced the tornadoes. Rapid increases in lightning activity often precede severe and tornadic thunderstorms. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A dangerous nor’easter parked over New England delivered a powerful punch to the region this week. This nor’easter also meets the criteria to be considered a “bomb cyclone” because of how quickly the storm intensified. A bomb cyclone is defined as a mid-latitude cyclone whose minimum central air pressure drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. In fact, this storm dropped more than 30 millibars in less than 24 hours, and set low-pressure records for the month of October in Boston, Providence, R.I., and Portland, Maine.
The powerful coastal system, seen in this GOES-16 (GOES East) air mass RGB (red-green-blue) imagery from Oct. 17, 2019, brought very heavy rainfall and damaging winds. The National Weather Service (NWS) in Boston reported overnight wind gusts of 90 mph in Provincetown, Mass. Those powerful wind gusts left nearly half a million people in Massachusetts and Maine without power.
Air mass RGB imagery combines water vapor and infrared imagery from the satellite’s imager and is used to monitor the evolution of cyclones and jet streaks. Learn more about RGBs at https://go.usa.gov/xVJ6u. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
This nearly 5-hour loop from GOES-16 (GOES East) shows Hurricane Dorian inching across Grand Bahama Island on September 2, 2019. On September 3, Dorian is forecast to move dangerously close to the east coast of Florida, where hurricane warnings are in effect from Jupiter Inlet to Ponte Vedra Beach. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 captured 30-second visible and infrared imagery of Category 5 Hurricane Dorian on September 1, 2019, as just east of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. After moving slowly westward across Great Abaco Island, Dorian later became the first Category 5 hurricane on record to make landfall on Grand Bahama Island. Dorian is tied for the strongest Atlantic hurricane landfall on record with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES East) spotted lightning in the eye of Hurricane Dorian the morning of September 1, 2019. The now catastrophic Category 5 storm is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge and very heavy rainfall to the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama. Researchers have shown that the amount of lightning in the inner core and outer rainbands can indicate whether a storm will rapidly intensify. Download Video Credit: NOAA
This GOES-16 (GOES East) one-minute visible imagery from August 30, 2019, shows an eye starting to form in Hurricane Dorian. The formation of an eye is almost always an indicator of increasing tropical cyclone organization and strength. As of 11 a.m. EDT, Hurricane Dorian is centered about 660 miles east of West Palm Beach, Florida. Maximum sustained winds are near 110 mph (175 km/h) with higher gusts. Dorian is expected to become a major hurricane later today, and it will remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane while it moves near the northwestern Bahamas and approaches the Florida peninsula into early next week. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Dorian remained a Category 1 Hurricane in the early morning of August 29, 2019, as it advanced to the northwest, north of Puerto Rico. This GOES-16 (GOES East) imagery, which combines infrared imagery and the sea surface temperature data product, with the National Hurricane Center forecast track overlaid, shows the hurricane is expected to continue through very warm waters as it approaches the east coast of Florida. Sea surface temperatures along the track are around 85F. More info and imagery. Download Video Credit: NOAA/GOES-R Satellite Liaison Blog
GOES-16 (GOES East) captured this large plume of Saharan Dust – the largest so far this year – on August 26, 2019. GOES East is ideally positioned to detect Saharan dust blowing across the Atlantic Ocean. The presence of a strong Saharan Air Layer (SAL), a dry and sometimes dust-laden layer of the troposphere that often stabilizes the environment around tropical systems as it traverses across the Atlantic Ocean basin, has been shown to influence Atlantic hurricane activity. Most of the properties associated with the SAL deter hurricane development. Therefore, characterizing this air mass in extent and strength is an important component in hurricane forecasting. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A gas pipeline ruptured in Lincoln County, Kentucky in the early hours of August 1, 2019, causing an explosion. One person was killed and several were injured. GOES-16 (GOES East) detected the explosion. This fire temperature red-green-blue (RGB) imagery, which combines multiple infrared channels from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), shows the hot spot from the fire. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Circulation within Tropical Storm Barry is much more apparent in this GOES-16 (GOES East) imagery from 10 a.m. EDT on July 12, 2019. As the storm bears down on the Gulf Coast, heavy rainfall and storm surge remain the biggest threats. This day cloud phase distinction RGB imagery highlights deep convection (where the worst part of the storm is) in yellow colors. Shallow clouds show up light blue, and as they get deeper, they transition from blue to green and then to yellow. In this case, it does a good job of showing the movement of the low clouds relative to the deep convection, which is an indicator that Barry is not a well-organized tropical system. Geostationary Lightning Mapper data is overlaid, showing lightning activity in the storm. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East saw the moon’s shadow as it moved west to east across South America on July 2, 2019. Parts of Chile and Argentina experienced a total solar eclipse, which is when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, blocking out all of the light from the sun. Those in the path of totality were able to see the sun’s corona. While the eclipse began over the Pacific Ocean, La Serena, Chile, was one of the first cities in the path of totality to view the eclipse. Download Video Credit: NOAA
The GOES-16 (GOES East) Geostationary Lightning Mapper captured an asteroid entering the atmosphere south of Puerto Rico on June 22, 2019. At 4:25 p.m. EDT, meteorologists noticed an unusually bright flash signature over Caribbean waters 170 miles south of Puerto Rico. Its light was visible in an area as large as Rhode Island — far too big to be a lightning strike. Also, there were no clouds in the area. A spattering of debris showed up on the radar of the National Weather Service’s office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a telltale sign of a meteor or asteroid impact. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty sensors in Bermuda measured the resulting mid-air blast between 3 and 5 kilotons of TNT. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 viewed wildfires in Alberta, Canada, May 28-29, 2019, which produced a great deal of smoke and pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud. Intense heating by wildfires can generate a smoke-infused thunderstorm, or pyroCb, as seen here in this day land cloud fire RGB (red-green-blue) imagery. This type of imagery combines multiple channels from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument, and is used to identify fire hotspots, smoke and burn scars. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East got a close-up view of a tornado-producing storm near Joplin, Missouri, the night of May 22-23, 2019. This “sandwich” imagery combines visible and infrared imagery from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager. The result is multi-dimensional imagery that offers spectacular views of storm attributes in rich detail. The mix of visible data and temperature from infrared imagery help identify key formations in a storm. The green, yellow, and red areas in this animation show the temperatures of cloud tops within the storm. The brighter colors represent colder cloud tops, which indicate areas of greater storm intensity.
More than two dozen tornadoes were reported across Missouri and Oklahoma, including several that prompted tornado emergencies. One of those tornado emergencies was issued for Golden City, where at least three fatalities were reported. Golden City is located about 30 miles northeast of Joplin, where eight years ago, an EF-5 tornado struck, killing more than 100 people and causing $2.8 billion in damages. A large and destructive tornado also touched down in Jefferson City, causing heavy damage in Missouri’s capital city. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES East) captured this powerful supercell storm near Lubbock, Texas, on May 5, 2019. This “sandwich” imagery combines visible and infrared imagery from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager. The result is multi-dimensional imagery that offers spectacular views of storm attributes in rich detail. The mix of visible data and temperature from infrared imagery help identify key formations in a storm. The green, yellow, and red areas in this animation show the temperatures of cloud tops within the storm. The brighter colors represent colder cloud tops, which indicate areas of greater storm intensity. Download Video Credit: NOAA
A tornado passed through the town of San Augustine, Texas, late in the evening of April 24, 2019. GOES East (GOES-16) Geostationary Lightning Mapper data showed a significant increase in lightning activity during the 10-20 minute period prior to the tornado at 11:20 p.m. CDT. Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) infrared imagery (gray-scale), tornado (red) and severe thunderstorm (yellow) warnings, along with the tornado local storm report (yellow symbol) are also shown in this loop. Trends in total lightning available from GLM provide critical information to forecasters, allowing them to focus on initial thunderstorm development and intensifying severe storms before these storms produce damaging winds, hail or even tornadoes. Such storms often exhibit a significant increase in total lightning activity, particularly in-cloud lightning. GLM data, used in combination with radar, data from the GOES-R Series Advanced Baseline Imager, and surface observations, has great potential to increase lead-time for severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES East captured a significant blowing dust event in New Mexico and Texas on the afternoon of April 10, 2019. The reduced visibility from the blowing dust led to multiple accidents and road closures. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East watched over an outflow from two areas of convection that merged to form a third area of convection northeast of the Bahamas on March 29, 2019. This day cloud phase distinction RGB (red-green-blue) combines three channels of the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager to evaluate the phase of cooling cloud tops to monitor convective initiation, storm growth, and decay. This data product takes advantage of cloud reflectance differences between the visible and near-infrared channels and temperature variances between land and clouds in the infrared to provide increased contrast between background surfaces and phases of clouds. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured this imagery of ice flowing around Newfoundland and Labrador on March 27, 2019. This snow/cloud layers imagery, from our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), is useful for forecasters to distinguish clouds from snow and ice, which is difficult to do using conventional visible and infrared satellite imagery. This data product uses new channels available from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument that offer unique information on features of interest and combines them into a single product. Combining information from several channels helps forecasters to isolate snow and ice from clouds. In this imagery, green is land, white/blueish white is snow/ice cover, and orange/magenta shows mid/high level ice phase clouds. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East watches a hurricane-force low that's headed toward the Antarctic Peninsula in this air mass RGB imagery from March 26, 2019. This type of imagery combines data from water vapor and infrared bands on the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager and is used to monitor the evolution of cyclones and jet streaks and provides information on the middle and upper levels of the troposphere. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Tropical Storm Iba, seen here by GOES East, formed off the southeast coast of Brazil on Sunday, March 24, 2019. This is the South Atlantic's first named tropical storm since 2010. The lack of tropical cyclones in the region is generally attributed to cool sea surface temperatures and strong vertical wind shear, according to NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 infrared imagery with Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) overlay of severe weather affecting the Midwest March 12-14, 2019. This storm caused severe flooding in southeastern South Dakota, eastern Nebraska, and western/central Iowa. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Although the sun has reached the minimum of its activity cycle and has been very quiet for months, even at its most quiet, the sun still can throw us a curve ball now and then. On March 8, 2019, it gave us a small solar eruption and flare. The flare — a relatively minor C1 class flare — nonetheless produced a shockwave big enough to disturb the whole solar corona. The GOES East Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) caught this disturbance, which solar physicists call an extreme-ultraviolet wave, and this movie shows how it bounces around in the million degree, magnetized structures in the corona. The flare also touched off a couple of small coronal mass ejections, prompting NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center to issue watches for a minor geomagnetic storm around Earth, but ultimately both disturbances narrowly missed our planet and passed harmlessly out into interplanetary space. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Wave clouds were seen forming over Virginia on March 7, 2019, from the GOES East satellite. These mid-level clouds are called altocumulus undulatus and usually form about 7,000 to 22,000 feet in the atmosphere. The colors in this satellite imagery allow us to identify different types of clouds and land features. Low-level clouds are turquoise and lavender, snow cover is green, and thin high-level clouds appear red-orange. This "Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB” (red-green blue) imagery is useful for observing rapidly developing cumulus clouds. Compared to visible satellite imagery, it provides greater contrast for distinguishing between ice and water clouds and other land features. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A powerful tornado outbreak hit the southern U.S. on March 3, 2019, leaving damage across southern Alabama and Georgia, the Florida Panhandle, and parts of South Carolina. This GOES East “sandwich” imagery shows the storm that spawned a destructive tornado in Lee County, Alabama. The tornado caused at least 23 fatalities, and according to a National Weather Service preliminary assessment, it was at least an F3 and one-half mile wide or more. This kind of imagery is known as a "sandwich” because it combines imagery from two of the 16 spectral channels offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager: band 2 (a visible band) and band 13 (an infrared band). During processing, the transparency of the infrared band is increased and laid on top of the visible band. The result, as seen here, is imagery that offers spectacular views of storm attributes in rich detail. This approach retains both the cloud-top thermal structure as well as the finer visible band details such as over-shooting tops and transverse banding. Download Video Credit: NOAA
On February 19, 2019, the skies were clear enough for GOES East to see ice on the move in Lake Superior and northern Lake Michigan. This natural color satellite imagery, also known as "Day Land Cloud RGB" was developed by the European satellite agency, EUMETSAT. This type of imagery allows us to see certain surface features, such as snow and ice cover, with better clarity. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NCEI
GOES East captured a partial solar eclipse on February 5, 2019. In this animation from the satellite’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument, you can see the moon passing across the sun. A partial eclipse occurs when the sun and moon are not exactly in line with the Earth and the moon only partially obscures the sun. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NCEI
GOES East infrared imagery shows an interesting "Fujiwhara" between a pair of low pressure systems off the U.S. East Coast on February 5, 2019. The Fujiwhara effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two nearby cyclonic vortices orbit each other and close the distance between the circulations of their corresponding low-pressure areas. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
On February 1, 2019, at 1:17 p.m. EST, the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) detected a bright meteor over northwestern Cuba. The meteorite landed near Viñales, Pinar del Río in western Cuba. While designed for mapping lightning flashes, GLM can observe large meteors anywhere throughout its coverage area. The instrument takes 500 images of Earth every second, allowing it to measure the shape of a meteor “light curve,” or the change in brightness of a meteor with time, with millisecond precision. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
After days of record cold in the Midwest, the amount of ice on the Great Lakes has increased significantly, as seen in this GOES East high/low cloud/snow discriminator imagery from January 31, 2019. This colorful satellite imagery uses a product called the "snow/cloud discriminator," developed by NOAA's partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). High cirrus clouds (composed of ice) appear pink, low clouds are yellow, snow cover is white, and bare land appears green. This type of imagery is a useful tool to weather forecasters during winter, because it helps us see the difference between clouds and snow-covered ground, even at night. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
It is so cold and dry over the Midwest U.S. that surface features show up in this GOES East low-level water vapor imagery from January 30, 2019, including the Great Lakes, Finger Lakes and the Ohio River. The low-level water vapor channel detects atmospheric moisture, which means we normally can't see land features such as mountains, lakes and rivers. However, the air from this polar vortex is so dry that the satellite's water vapor channel can see straight to the ground. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A bitterly cold polar air mass dipped into the north central United States during the last week of January 2019. During the early morning hours of January 30, temperatures dropped into the -20s to -30s (F) over a wide swath of the upper Midwest, while daytime highs on the 30th were not expected to get out of the negative teens. With breezy northwest winds also present, wind chill values dropped below -50F in many locations. GOES East provided some intriguing views of the cold air mass as it affected the region during the week. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES East spotted a large phytoplankton bloom stretching hundreds of miles off the coast of Argentina on December 17, 2018. The swirling patterns reveal not just the presence of phytoplankton, but also show how ocean currents are moving them around. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Full(er) disk imagery from GOES East (GOES-16) and GOES-17 (soon to be GOES West)! This animation shows the Western Hemisphere in a Mollweide map projection, combining GOES-16 and GOES-17 water vapor imagery from December 10-17, 2018. Download Video Credit: CIMSS
A powerful low pressure system produced hurricane-force winds and 30 to 40 foot waves in the western North Atlantic on December 6, 2018. Here are four views of the storm off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland seen from GOES East. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES East captured imagery of the “Camp Fire” in northern California on November 8, 2018. The wildfire developed in the early morning hours and spread quickly within very windy and dry weather conditions. Hot spots and a large plume of smoke are seen in this fire temperature RGB (red-green-blue) imagery is created with Advanced Baseline Imager bands 7, 6, and 5 (shortwave and near infrared bands), which are used to detect hot spots. To make this animation, the fire temperature imagery is made partially transparent and placed over a GeoColor enhancement, so both the fire's hot spots and smoke plume are visible. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured a line of thunderstorms that moved across Cuba on October 15, 2018. In this imagery, shallow convection and low clouds appear blue. As they grow into deeper convection, they turn green and then yellow. High cirrus clouds will look yellow/orange. This a classic example of thunderstorms forming along a sea breeze front. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East satellite captured this visible imagery of Hurricane Michael as the storm made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, at around 1:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018. Michael hit the Florida Panhandle as a major Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
One-minute GOES East visible-infrared "sandwich" imagery of Category 3 Hurricane Michael on October 9, 2018, as it approached the Florida Panhandle. Michael strengthened to a Category 4 storm early on October 10 and is expected to make landfall over the Florida Panhandle later that same day. The National Hurricane Center warns that life-threatening storm surge, hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall are imminent. This kind of imagery is known as a "sandwich product" because it combines imagery from two of the 16 spectral channels offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager: Band 2 (a visible band) and Band 13 (an infrared band). During processing, the transparency of the infrared band is increased and laid on top of the visible band. The result, as seen here, is imagery that offers spectacular views of storm attributes in rich detail. For example, the green, yellow, and red areas in this animation show the temperatures of cloud tops within the hurricane. The brighter colors indicate colder cloud tops, which indicate areas of greater storm intensity. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured four days of Hurricane Florence, September 14-17, 2018. Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, at 7:15 a.m. ET on September 14, 2018, as a Category 1 storm. Florence produced widespread, catastrophic flooding in one of the most significant rainfall events on record in the Carolinas, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. Over a large portion of the region, observed rainfall had an estimated less-than 1% chance of occurring in any given year, indicating a rare and historic event. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
The tropics are active as seen by #GOESEast on September 11, 2018. From left to right: Paul, Florence, Issaac, and Helene and two more areas of possible development. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East 30-second visible imagery of major Hurricane Florence churning in the Atlantic Ocean on September 10, 2018 highlights the eyewall mesovortices in the storm. Rapid-scan imagery from GOES East has been instrumental in center fixing and getting a better characterization of the organization of tropical storms. Download Video Credit: CIRA/NOAA
GOES East saw Hurricane Florence spinning in the open Atlantic Ocean on September 5, 2018. The Category 3 storm has sustained winds of 125 mph, making it the first major hurricane to form in the Atlantic this year. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A comparison of visible imagery from three GOES satellites, left to right, GOES-15 (GOES West) scanning every 30 minutes, GOES-17 (preliminary/non-operational) every 5 minutes and GOES-16 (GOES East) generating 1-minute imagery. This comparison loop clearly shows how ABI advancements help monitor severe weather. The imagery shows a severe thunderstorm that developed ahead of an advancing cold front in central South Dakota late in the day on August 26, 2018. This storm produced hail as large as 4 inches in diameter and also exhibited an above anvil cirrus plume (AACP) which is a signature often associated with severe thunderstorms. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
GOES-East got a spectacular view of nocturnal thunderstorms near Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela on August 15, 2018. This animation shows GeoColor imagery with a Geostationary Lightning Mapper lightning overlay. This area is known for “Catatumbo lightning,” an atmospheric phenomenon that only occurs over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo. Catatumbo lightning is one of the world's most frequent lightning displays, with thunderstorms forming over the Catatumbo River in Venezuela an average of 160 nights per year. The near-continuous lightning displays last up to 9 hours, beginning shortly after dusk. Lake Maracaibo has a unique geography and climatology that is ideal for the development of thunderstorms. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured the red tide of algae off the coast of Florida on August 15, 2018. This harmful algal bloom has caused a state of emergency. These blooms occur when colonies of algae (simple plants that live in the sea and freshwater) grow out of control and produce toxic effects on people, shellfish, marine mammals and birds. The toxins can kill fish, make shellfish dangerous to eat and make the surrounding air difficult to breath. The bloom of algae often turns the water red. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES East captured the partial solar eclipse on August 11, 2018. In this animation from the satellite’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI), you can see the moon passing across the sun. A partial eclipse occurs when the sun and moon are not exactly in line with the Earth and the moon only partially obscures the sun. This partial eclipse was visible in northern North America, Greenland, northern Europe and northeastern Asia. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES East monitors the spread of the active deadly California wildfires as the sun set on July 30, 2018. This 'fire temperature' satellite imagery allows us to pinpoint where the hottest and most intense fires are in order to help response teams and decision makers on the ground. This satellite loop combines the GOES East GeoColor and Fire Temperature RGB (red-green-blue) layers to show the location and intensity of active fires. The hotter the fire, the brighter it will appear in the imagery. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 one-minute visible imagery with Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) data overlaid for a tornadic storm in Iowa on July 19, 2018.Download Video Credit: NOAA/Satellite Liaison Blog
Can you see this animation in 3D? Test your depth perception with this stereoscopic view of storms over the Tennessee River Valley on July 11, 2018. GOES East (GOES-16) is on the left, GOES17 on the right. The GOES-17 satellite (launched March 1, 2018), is currently in a test position, viewing Earth from 22,000 miles above the equator at 89.5 degrees west longitude. Meanwhile, GOES East is positioned at 75.2 degrees west longitude. The relative proximity of these two satellites means that we can create stereoscopic, or three-dimensional, imagery by placing views from each satellite next to one another. To view the animation in three dimensions, cross your eyes so that three separate images are present, then focus on the image in the middle. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA/CIMSS
GOES East captured the eruption of the Sierra Negra volcano in the Galapagos Islands on July 1, 2018, shown in this multispectral red-green-blue imagery. This volcanic plume was rich in sulfur dioxide (SO2), a toxic gas released by volcanic activity, depicted as a green plume in this imagery. SO2 detection is a new capability offered by the GOES-R Series Advanced Baseline Imager. Previous GOES imagers are able to detect an ash cloud, but not the SO2 signature. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Dry thunderstorms, lightning, and record heat are never a good combination out west - like these storms GOES East saw over Colorado and New Mexico on June 28, 2018. Wildfire hotspots appear bright red in this satellite imagery. This blended satellite imagery uses a composite of imaging channels from the GOES East Advanced Baseline Imager to create the Day Land Cloud Fire RGB product and an overlay of lightning flashes from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East got a nice view of valley fog along the Upper Mississippi River near the border of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin on June 28, 2018. Watch the fog burn off along the river valleys as the heat of the day gets underway. This imagery was captured by the GOES East Advanced Baseline Imager's "red" visible channel, which is used to see low-level clouds (such as fog), severe weather, volcanic ash, and daytime snow and ice cover during the winter months. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
Like ships passing in the night: Watch these cargo ships leave their mark over the ocean as atmospheric water vapor condenses around their exhaust to form clouds. These ship tracks were seen by GOES East off the coast of Chile the night of June 19-20, 2018. As cargo ships steam across the oceans, the tiny aerosol particles in their exhaust act as cloud nuclei, or seeds around which moisture in the atmosphere can condense. Occasionally this results in ship tracks becoming visible in cloud imagery. In some of the world's most heavily trafficked shipping lanes around Western Europe and East Asia, satellites sometimes see dozens of criss-crossing cloud trails that extend hundreds of miles off the coast. Though the exhaust released by ships is not a significant source of pollution, it does modify clouds, which may have an impact on climate. The high reflectivity of ship track clouds means they shade the Earth’s surface from incoming sunlight. However, like aircraft contrails, they may also trap the sun's radiation in our atmosphere to produce a warming effect, especially at night. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured the mesoscale convective system that dumped more than 5 inches of rain over Iowa on June 14, 2018. Check out all the lightning flashes seen by the satellite's Geostationary Lightning Mapper, as well as the transverse cirrus cloud bands spreading over Lake Michigan.
A mesoscale convective system (MCS) is a complex of thunderstorms which becomes organized on a scale larger than the individual thunderstorms, and normally persists for several hours or more. One interesting feature of this MCS is the presence of transverse cirrus bands on the storm's periphery. These tendril-like projections are commonly seen in the outflow of thunderstorms and are usually a sign of severe turbulence happening in the atmosphere.
Transverse cirrus bands often form on the northern edge of a mesoscale convective system, where upper level winds along the storm's outflow boundary tend to be the strongest. When an MCS interacts with the mid-latitude jet stream, the fast-moving current of air that separates cold and warm air masses in the mid-latitudes, the air turbulence causing these wispy cloud tendrils is even further enhanced. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
See tides push and pull the ice in the Hudson Strait in this GOES East imagery from June 13, 2018. The Hudson Strait links the Atlantic Ocean and Labrador Sea to Hudson Bay in Canada. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured Tropical Storm Aletta organizing in the east Pacific Ocean on June 6, 2018. Aletta is the first named storm of the 2018 Eastern Pacific hurricane season. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East got an impressive view of the Fuego volcano erupting in Guatemala on June 3, 2018. Despite all the clouds overhead, it's not hard to miss the ash cloud that bursts onto the scene a few seconds into this loop. Known locally as "Volcán de Fuego," the 12,346 foot volcano is one of the most active in Latin America, having erupted as recently as February 2018. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
A large wildfire ignited and spread rapidly in New Mexico on May 31, 2018, prompting evacuation orders. GOES East captured the smoke from the fires seen here in this 4 hour satellite imagery loop. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured the eruption of the Sabancaya Volcano in Peru in this GeoColor imagery from May 29, 2018. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CICS
GOES East satellite imagery of subtropical storm Alberto also captured the lightning during landfall within the storm on May 27-28, 2018. Lightning data helps give forecasters an indication of when a storm is forming, intensifying and becoming more dangerous. Alberto was the first named storm of the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CICS
t's time for "May Gray" and "June Gloom" along the #California coast - when stubborn low clouds and fog overstay their welcome and keep the sun away. This GOES East visible channel view shows the marine layer along the southern California coast between Los Angeles and San Diego on May 24, 2018. how the clouds start to retreat and burn off as the day progresses.
May and June are usually the cloudiest months of the year in coastal southern California. This unique weather pattern happens due to the large temperature contrast between the ocean and air. In late spring, the sun is very strong and heats the air above the land and ocean very effectively. However, the waters of the Pacific Ocean are still relatively cold, which causes a shallow layer of low-lying clouds to form over water (known as the 'marine layer'). Onshore winds often blow clouds toward the coast during the evening and overnight hours. If the marine layer is deep and moist enough, stubborn clouds and fog can persist along the coast into the afternoon. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured severe thunderstorms and smoke from fires in Northern Mexico on May 22, 2018. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East viewed a pyrocumulonimbus cloud created by the smoke and heat from the Mallard Fire in West Texas on May 11, 2018, which produced one inch hail. This animation was created using fire temperature RGB (red-green-blue) imagery, which is used to detect fire hot spots. This imagery is created using three shortwave and near-infrared bands on the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument. Active hot spots show up as red, yellow and white as the fire grows increasingly hotter. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NCEI
NOAA's GOES East (GOES-16) satellite's Solar Ultraviolet Imagery (SUVI) instrument captured a full rotation of the sun in March 2018. The sun completes a rotation once every 27.5 days. SUVI monitors the sun’s atmosphere, a million-degree dynamic solar corona, and characterizes complex active regions of the sun, solar flares, and the eruptions of solar filaments which may give rise to coronal mass ejections. Solar changes have the potential to disrupt power grids and communications and navigation systems and damage orbiting satellites and the International Space Station. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NCEI
GOES East captured this one-minute imagery of severe thunderstorms in Texas and Oklahoma on May 3, 2018. GOES East has the ability to scan targeted areas of severe weather every 60 seconds, giving forecasters more timely indication of evolving and intensifying storms. The frequent updates also allow forecasters to see portions of the storms that change very rapidly with time, such as the storm's overshooting tops or gravity waves propagating along the storm's anvil cloud top. Both of these can be indicators of the strength of the storm. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East GeoColor view of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean islands on May 2, 2018, shows sunglint passing over the island's calm water zones. The water is a different color west of the islands because in the tropics, the prevailing winds blow from east to west. As these winds encounter the islands, the land acts like a barrier (or windbreaker), which protects the water from the wind and waves on the other side.
The satellite can see all of this because of sunglint. Notice how early in the loop, the ocean ripples appear darker than the surrounding water. Yet as the sun passes over the region, the colors flip, and the calm water zones in the wake of the islands suddenly turn brighter than the surrounding water.This happens because the calm ocean acts like a mirror when the sun moves overhead, helping reflect direct sunlight back to the satellite. In the rougher surrounding waters where there are more waves, the water is less reflective, and therefore appears darker than the calm water zones downwind of the islands. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East captured suspended sediment in the shallow areas of the Great Lakes, following a late-spring snowstorm. Brisk spring winds combined with lake currents to send tendrils of mud and other debris swirling into deeper, bluer waters. Sediment loads tends to be especially heavy in the western end of Lake Erie. Of all the Great Lakes, Erie usually has the most sediment loading because of extensive farmland and cities near its shores. Since it is also the shallowest of the lakes, winds and currents can easily stir up sediments (quartz sand and silt, as well as calcium carbonate from limestone) on the lake bottom. And farmland, particularly fields that lack winter cover crops, tends to give up large amounts of sediment to rivers and streams. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
GOES East captured gravity waves induced by convection in Argentina on April 23, 2018. This animation shows colorized infrared imagery from the mid-level tropospheric water vapor band on GOES-16’s Advanced Baseline Imager instrument. This band is used for mid and upper-level tropospheric water vapor tracking, jet stream identification, hurricane track forecasting, mid-latitude storm forecasting, severe weather analysis, and mid-level moisture estimation. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This GOES East GeoColor imagery with accumulated lightning energy overlay from the GLM instrument from April 13, 2018, shows lightning, fires, dust storms, blizzard conditions and thundersnow associated with a severe storm system that brought the all-time 2nd largest snowfall to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES East spotted eddies in the Gulf Stream meandering past the Mid-Atlantic coast on April 11, 2018. The warmest sea surface temperatures appear dark orange in this satellite loop. The Gulf Stream is a warm and fast-moving boundary current in the North Atlantic that influences the climate of the east coast of North America and western Europe. Originating in the Gulf of Mexico, the current moves at a clip of about 4 mph, and transports nearly four billion cubic feet of water per second - an amount greater than that carried by all of the world's rivers combined. This imagery uses the longwave infrared channel ("Band 13") on GOES East's Advanced Baseline Imager, which can detect clouds and atmospheric water vapor as well as sea surface temperatures. Download Video Credit: CIRA/NOAA
GOES East (GOES-16) captured rapid snowmelt in Wyoming on April 9, 2018. Watch the white snow turn to green snow-free land in this High/Low Cloud/Snow Discriminator product imagery (clouds = magenta/yellow). Knowledge of snow cover is important for numerous applications, including search and rescue (e.g., assisting pilots over mountainous terrain), water supply resource monitoring and management, short-term forecasting (e.g., of radiation fog or monitoring the progress of a major winter storm), and recreation. Satellites offer a distinct perspective on snow cover, particularly in areas where there are few ground observing stations. The purpose of this product is to assist satellite imagery analysts in distinguishing snow vs. cloud cover during the daytime hours, and is particularly relevant during the winter months when snowfall occurs across many parts of the United States. Download Video Credit: CIRA/NRL/NOAA
This GOES East satellite imagery shows an atmospheric river recently spotted in the Southern Hemisphere. Sometimes called "rivers in the sky," atmospheric rivers are long plumes of tropical moisture in Earth's atmosphere. This atmospheric river is visible in the line of clouds and storms parading across the South Pacific toward the southern tip of South America. This satellite loop (captured March 31 to April 2, 2018) uses Air Mass RGB Imagery. This product helps distinguish polar from tropical air masses and identify the boundary between moisture and dry air. It also distinguishes between high vs. mid-level clouds. Warmer air masses appear bright green, while colder and drier air masses appear blue and brown, respectively. High clouds associated with the South Pacific atmospheric river appear white in this imagery. The blue areas mixing in indicate cold, polar air originating closer to Antarctica. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
This animation highlights four weeks of GOES East (GOES-16) imagery, spanning February 28 to March 24, 2018, at a 15-minute interval, showing four nor’easters. The imagery shows CIMSS Natural Color imagery during the day and a blend of GOES-16 ABI shortwave (3.9 µm) and longwave (10.3 µm) infrared imagery at night. Download Video Credit: CIMSS
NOAA’s GOES East (GOES-16) captured the fourth nor’easter to hit the U.S. East Coast in a month on March 22, 2018. The Northeast has been hit with a series of nor’easters this month, bringing wind, heavy snowfall, rain and flooding to the region. The U.S. East Coast provides an ideal breeding ground for nor’easters. During winter, the polar jet stream transports cold Arctic air southward across the plains of Canada and the United States, then eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean where warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic tries to move northward. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream help keep the coastal waters relatively mild during the winter, which in turn helps warm the cold winter air over the water. This difference in temperature between the warm air over the water and cold Arctic air over the land is the fuel that feeds nor’easters. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Widespread thundersnow reports accompanied the March 7, 2018 nor’easter. The GOES East (GOES-16) Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) imaged this lightning as the storm evolved throughout the day. The location and timing of the lightning coincides with the strongest snowfall rates which can help forecasters better characterize these rapidly changing conditions. During early afternoon, the GLM indicated several expansive flashes that stretched nearly the length of New Jersey. These flashes are especially dangerous because they can strike long distances from where they initiate in the cloud. One of these flashes struck two people at a bus stop in New Jersey and several flashes ignited structure fires. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
March is off to a stormy start: Watch three powerful low pressure systems in this GOES East water vapor animation from the satellite's mid-level water vapor infrared band on March 6, 2018. A storm in the central U.S. is producing heavy snow and blizzard conditions in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest, while two storm systems can be seen swirling off the West and East Coasts. The storm off the East Coast is a secondary hurricane-force low that formed west of the nor'easter that battered the Mid-Atlantic and New England late last week. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
GOES East (GOES-16) captured imagery of the powerful and deadly nor'easter storm on March 4, 2018. The storm devastated areas of the East Coast producing powerful wind gusts over 80 mph in areas and significant snowfall and flooding. Download Video Credit: NOAA
The GOES-S launch as seen by its Sister Satellite, GOES East (GOES-16) on March 1, 2018. This imagery is from GOES East's simple water vapor channel. GOES-S launched at 5:02 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 caught this mesmerizing loop of fog rolling in and out of central Chile on February 15, 2018. Notice how the fog burns off during the day and then reforms at night. This happens because overnight, the ground cools as the heat that was gathered from the sun’s rays during the day gets released back into the air. Due to differences in air pressure between the mountaintops and valleys, the denser, cooler air on mountaintops sinks into valleys, and collects there. As cold air settles near the valley floor overnight, it lowers the temperature of the surrounding air. If there is sufficient moisture near the ground, the air becomes saturated as it cools, causing fog to form as the night progresses. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
The air above can act like water below - check out this 'tropopause fold' wave like pattern over the Pacific captured by NOAA's GOES-EAST (GOES-16) satellite on February 5, 2018, caused by the mixing of air from the stratosphere with the troposphere. This imagery utilizes the GOES-16 Air Mass RGB (red-green-blue) product, which is used to monitor the evolution of cyclones and jet streaks and provides information on the middle and upper levels of the troposphere. It uses water vapor and infrared imagery from the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
Guatemala's Volcán de Fuego erupted on February 1, 2018, sending a cloud of ash into the sky more than 5,000 feet high. This GOES-East (GOES-16) animation shows GeoColor imagery (upper left), visible imagery from band 2 of the Advanced Baseline Imagery (ABI) instrument (upper right), the volcanic ash RGB (red-green-blue) product (lower left) and fire temperature RGB product (lower right) of the volcano erupting. The RGB products allow for better discernment of features like ash and hot spots. In the volcanic ash red-green blue (RGB) product ash is shown as reddish pink, thick clouds as yellowish brown, think cirrus clouds as dark blue, and surface (land and water) of the Earth as pale blue. The fire temperature RGB (red-green-blue) product is used to detect hot spots. This imagery is created by using three shortwave and near-infrared bands on the ABI. Active hot spots show up as red, yellow and white as the fires grow increasingly hotter. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-16 (NOAA’s GOES-East) caught “training” thunderstorms in Argentina on January 24, 2018, in this ABI band 13 infrared imagery. Training occurs when multiple thunderstorms produce heavy rain over the same area, following the same path like a train car. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-East (GOES-16) captured von Kármán vortex streets near the Cape Verde islands on January 22, 2018, as well as cloud swirls in a layer of Saharan dust blowing off of Africa. Cloud streets typically form long straight lines over large flat areas of the ocean. Sometimes, however, geological features like islands and volcanoes can disrupt the flow of the wind and create spiral patterns, similar to how large boulders create downstream eddies in rivers. The spirals, called von Kármán vortex streets, were named after Theodore von Kármán, a co-founder of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was one of the first scientists to describe this type of atmospheric phenomenon. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
GOES-East (GOES-16) captured rare "hole punch" clouds, also known as "fallstreak holes" moving over the New York City area on January 19, 2018. Mid- to high-level clouds in Earth's atmosphere, such as altocumulus, often contain tiny water droplets that are "supercooled" (that is, below freezing but still in liquid form). When ice crystals are introduced in the surrounding air - such as from aircraft passing through the cloud layer - the water droplets rapidly freeze and start to evaporate. The result: a large, circular hole gets left behind, and the cloud takes on a Swiss cheese appearance. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
This GOES-East (GOES-16) animation from January 17, 2018, shows snow cover extending from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada after the most recent winter storm to hit the U.S. This animation utilizes the “Day Land Cloud RGB” (red-green-blue) product, which combines imagery from several channels on the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument to discern snow cover from land and low clouds. The snow cover in this animation is shown as cyan. Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
This GOES-East (GOES-16) Air Mass RGB (red-green-blue) imagery shows the West Coast cyclone bringing heavy rain and mudslides to California on January 9, 2018. The Air Mass RGB product is used to monitor the evolution of cyclones and jet streaks and provides information on the middle and upper levels of the troposphere. It uses water vapor and infrared imagery from the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Download Video Credit: NOAA/CIRA
NOAA's GOES-East satellite caught a dramatic view of the bomb cyclone moving up the East Coast on the morning of January 4, 2018. The powerful nor'easter battered coastal areas with heavy snow and strong winds, from Florida to Maine. Notice the long line of clouds stretching over a thousand miles south of the storm. The storm is drawing moisture all the way from deep in the Caribbean. Why is it called a "bomb cyclone"? Meteorologists say that a storm undergoes "bombogenesis" when it rapidly intensifies over a short period. More precisely, it's a mid-latitude cyclone that sees its central pressure drop 24 millibars or more within 24 hours. Storms like this typically bring heavy precipitation, strong winds, and Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 (GOES-East) spotted an impressive mesovortex over Lake Michigan on December 31, 2017. The developing swirl of low pressure was responsible for a batch of heavy snow that hit parts of southern Michigan and neighboring Indiana to ring in the new year. You can see the clouds building and intensifying as they draw moisture and energy from the relatively warm waters of the lake, amidst bitterly cold air temperatures. Download Video Credit: NOAA
NOAA's GOES-East (GOES-16) satellite captured record-breaking lake effect snowfall in Erie, Pennsylvania, which dumped over 5 feet, 65.1" of snow as reported by the National Weather Service in total over some areas. This imagery was captured over the course of the day on December 27, 2017. Download Video Credit: NOAA
Astronomical winter began at 11:28 a.m. ET on December 21, 2017, marking the shortest day of the year in Earth's Northern Hemisphere. NOAA's GOES-East satellite (also known as GOES-16) caught this dramatic full-disk loop showing the North Pole covered in darkness while the South Pole sees 24-hour daylight. Download Video Credit: NOAA
GOES-16 caught this Saharan dust storm blowing off the western coast of Africa on December 19, 2017. About half of all dust suspended in Earth's atmosphere at any given time originates in North Africa. Download Video Credit: NOAA
NOAA's GOES-16 satellite has a new view of Earth! Here is the first sunrise imagery from the satellite's operational GOES-East position at 75 degrees west longitude, captured December 19, 2017. Download Video Credit: NOAA
A note to the weather community about using GOES-16 data.
This section contains imagery prior to GOES-16 being declared operational. Users assume all risk related to their use of pre-operational GOES-16 data and NOAA disclaims any and all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
This time-lapse movie of GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) data covers the afternoon and evening of November 5, 2017, when a large complex of thunderstorms spanned across Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. This GLM movie is rendered at 500x real time and overlaid with aircraft flight tracks to show how air traffic interacts with convective weather, with flights routed around the system or through gaps within the system to reach their destination. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
GOES-16 captured the eruption of Mexico's most active volcano, Popocatépetl, in this GeoColor imagery on November 23, 2017. The eruption sent a dramatic plume of ash 5,900 feet into the sky. Estimated to be about 730,000 years old, Popocatépetl is an active stratovolcano and Mexico's second-tallest peak, towering 17,802 feet outside of Mexico City. This eruption was the mountain's largest since 2013. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Dramatic limb view of a mid-latitude cyclone swirling in the north Atlantic, captured by NOAA GOES-16 on November 20, 2017. The center of the storm's circulation was located roughly halfway between North America and Europe and its associated cloud bands can be traced from an area south of Greenland all the way into the northern part of the tropics. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This GeoColor imagery from GOES-16 captures an interesting series of gravity waves in the clouds of the southeastern U.S. coast on November 15, 2017. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Note: This is preliminary, non-operational data as GOES-16 undergoes on-orbit testing.
This Virtual Reality 360 video view shows lightning captured by GOES-16 over Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela from November 1-10, 2017. In this area, the Catatumbo phenomenon creates the highest concentration of lightning on Earth. Download Video Credit: CICS-MD
“Closed cell” stratocumulus clouds were captured by GOES-16 visible satellite imagery in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California On October 31, 2017. These cloud formations typically form under high pressure and calm winds. Rising warm air in the center of each cell sinks on the edges, creating the darker/less reflective areas. Download Video Credit: NOAA
During the morning of October 29, 2017, Tropical Storm Philippe raced northeast away from the Florida coast. This GOES-16 water vapor imagery shows the evolution of the east coast storm system over 22.5 hours, ending early on the morning of October 30, 2017. This storm brought heavy rain and damaging winds across the Northeast. Download Video Credit: NOAA
The GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper captured an impressive lightning flash that propagated for about 250 miles across portions of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri on October 22, 2017. The lightning was associated with a squall line that was advancing across the plains that night. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
NOAA's GOES-16 satellite shows wildfires (in geo and natural fire color) raging in parts of California on October 10, 2017. The fire temperature RGB (red-green-blue) imagery is created with Advanced Baseline Imager bands 7, 6, and 5 (shortwave and near infrared), which are used to detect hot spots. As seen here, the active hot spots show up as red, yellow, and white as the fires grow increasingly hotter. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of the sunrise over Hurricane Nate as it approached the Gulf Coast on October 7, 2017. Nate is the 9th hurricane of the record-breaking 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Download Video Credit: CIRA
NOAA's GOES-16 captured the first blizzard of the season, breaking October snow records for Havre, Montana where 14 inches of snow fell in some areas. The Snow-Fog RGB product imagery shown here depicts low clouds (when present) in off-white colors, high-level ice clouds in bright magenta color, land and water surfaces as dark, and snow-covered land as red (as opposed to magenta). Download Video Credit: CIRA/NESDIS/RAMMB
Volcanic ash from the September 27, 2017, eruption of the Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico was detected with NOAA’s GOES-16. The reddish pink colors indicate ash. The other colors denote the following: yellowish/brown colors are thick clouds, the dark blues are thin cirrus clouds, and the pale blue indicates the surface (land and water) of the Earth. This volcanic ash red-green blue (RGB) product was developed by scientists at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this time lapse of total lightning activity during part of the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season, from August 25 - September 24. Rapid increases in total lightning are a signal that a thunderstorm is strengthening and could become more dangerous. In concert with other tools, the GOES-16 lightning mapper will help provide more accurate and earlier warnings of developing severe storms and give communities more time to prepare for impending severe weather. Download Video Credit: CICS-MD
This animation from NOAA GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (or GLM) shows the lightning from storms associated with Hurricane Maria over five days from September 16-20, 2017, as it made landfall over Puerto Rico. Of interest in this loop is the location of the lightning relative to the center of Hurricane Maria. Researchers have shown that the amount of lightning in the inner core and outer rainbands can indicate whether a storm will rapidly intensify. Download Video Credit: CICS-MD
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of the sunrise over Hurricane Maria on the morning of September 26, 2017. Maria weakens but remains a large storm with winds extending 105 miles. Download Video Credit: CIRA
NOAA's GOES-16 satellite captured this colorized-infrared imagery of Hurricane Maria over Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. This loop was created with Band-13, one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager. Band-13 is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. As seen here, the dark red color, like that near the eyewall of the storm, corresponds to areas of great intensity. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of Hurricane Maria making landfall on Puerto Rico on the morning of September 20, 2017. Maria made landfall near Yabucoa around 6:15 a.m. EDT as a category 4 hurricane. The National Hurricane Center reported (at 8:00 a.m. EDT on September 20) that Maria's maximum sustained winds were near 150 mph with higher gusts, and that hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 60 miles from the storm's center. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this 1-minute visible imagery of Hurricane Maria's eye on September 19, 2017. Maria was about 110 miles southeast of St. Croix with maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour with higher gusts. This animation was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) Band 2 and shows how the increased resolution offered by ABI is providing meteorologists with a more detailed look at the characteristics and structure of severe weather. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor animation of Category 5 Hurricane Maria on September 19, 2017. As of 9:00 a.m. EDT on September 19, the potentially catastrophic Maria has maximum sustained winds of 160 mph and is headed for the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with the eye expected to move over the northeastern Caribbean Sea today and approach the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico tonight and Wednesday. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 GeoColor imagery of Hurricanes Jose (left) and Maria (right) in the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of September 18, 2017. As of 8:00 a.m. EDT on September 18, Jose is located east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and has maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour. Maria is located about 85 miles east of Martinique and has maximum sustained winds of 110 miles per hour and additional rapid strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours. This image, captured just after daylight moved into the area, offers a blend of GeoColor imagery, with nighttime features on the far left and daytime throughout the rest of the image. Download Video Credit: CIRA
The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) on GOES-16 captured this imagery of a large solar flare on September 10, 2017. As seen in this 195 Å wavelength animation, you can see the flare’s onset as the rapid brightening in the southern active region, as well as the huge shock wave produced by the powerful flare bouncing around among the magnetic structures in the sun's corona, causing them to sway dramatically in the wake of the flare. The rope structures seen in profile called "magnetic flux rope" will likely form the core of a coronal mass ejection that could produce a geomagnetic storm near Earth. Download Video Credit: NOAA SWPC
NOAA's GOES-16 captured this GeoColor image of Tropical Storm Irma (formerly Hurricane Irma) from landfall on September 10th, to up until mid-morning, September 11, 2017. GeoColor imagery displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. This imagery offers a blend of both. In nighttime, liquid water clouds appear in shades of blue, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. (The city lights are a static background created with VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery. It does not show any existing power outages.) In daytime, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: CIRA
NOAA's GOES-16 captured this infrared imagery of Hurricane Irma on the afternoon of September 10, 2017. As of 5:00 pm (EDT), NOAA's National Hurricane Center reported that Irma has maximum sustained winds near 110 miles per hour with higher gusts. Although weakening is forecast, Irma is expected to remain a hurricane at least through Monday morning. Download Video Credit: NOAA
NOAA's GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of Hurricane Irma making landfall in the Florida Keys on the morning of September 10, 2017. According to the National Hurricane Center, the center of Hurricane Irma made landfall at Cudjoe Key at 9:10 am EDT. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of Hurricane Irma -- now located 115 miles southeast of Key West Florida -- on the afternoon of September 9, 2017. Currently a category 3 storm, Irma has maximum sustained winds near 125 mph with higher gusts. However, forecasters expect Irma to restrengthen once it moves away from Cuba, and remain a powerful hurricane as it approaches Florida. GeoColor imagery displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. This loop offers a blend of both, with nightime imagery at the beginning and daytime thereafter. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of Hurricane Irma along the north coast of Cuba on the morning of September 9, 2017. Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center say the core of Irma will continue to move near or over the north coast of Cuba this morning, and will reach the Florida Keys Sunday morning (9/10). The hurricane is expected to be near the southwest coast of Florida Sunday afternoon. the core of Irma will continue to move near or over the north coast of Cuba this morning, and will reach the Florida Keys Sunday morning (9/10). The hurricane is expected to be near the southwest coast of Florida Sunday afternoon. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this infrared imagery of Hurricane Irma, a category 4 storm, moving north of Cuba on September 8, 2017. According to forecasters with NOAA's National Hurricane Center, the eye of Irma should continue to move near the north coast of Cuba and the central Bahamas for the rest of today and Saturday (9/9), and be near the Florida Keys and the southern Florida Peninsula Sunday morning (9/10). This animation was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) Band 13, or longwave infrared band, and it shows how the increased resolution offered by ABI is providing meteorologists with a more detailed look at the behavior of clouds during storms. Download Video Credit: NOAA
This animation from GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (or GLM) shows the lightning from storms associated with Hurricane Irma over an approximately 7.5 -hour period beginning at approximately 1:30 p.m. (EDT) and ending at about 8:00 p.m. on September 8, 2017. The first instrument of its kind in geostationary orbit, the lightning mapper observes total lightning (both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground) and provides a constant vigil for lightning flashes day and night across the Western Hemisphere. Rapid increases in the amount lightning are a signal that a storm is strengthening and could become more dangerous. In concert with other tools, the lightning mapper will help provide more accurate and earlier warnings of developing severe storms and give communities more time to prepare for impending severe weather. Download Video Credit: CICS-MD
GOES-16 watches as Hurricane Irma continues its westward advance toward the central Bahamas on September 7, 2017. This loop was created with Band-13, one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager. Band-13, the so-called "clean" longwave infrared band, is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. As shown here, the imagery produced by this band offers detailed views of meteorological phenomena, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red), which are associated with more intense storm activity. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This 30-second visible imagery from GOES-16 offers a close-up on Hurricane Irma on September 7, 2017. This animation, which appears here courtesy of our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) Band 2, or red-visible band, and shows how the increased resolution offered by ABI is providing meteorologists with a more detailed look at the behavior of clouds during storms. The reference to "30-second" imagery refers to the frequency with which GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager can capture an image of the storm. 30-second imagery is produced when both of ABI's regional scan modes, each of which can produce an image every minute, are focused on the same area and then programmed to capture an image 30-seconds apart. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this colorized-infrared imagery of Hurricane Irma approaching Puerto Rico on the afternoon of September 6, 2017. According to NOAA's National Hurricane Center, the extremely dangerous core of Irma will continue to move over portions of the Virgin Islands during the next couple of hours, pass near or just north of Puerto Rico this afternoon or tonight, pass near or just north of the coast of the Dominican Republic Thursday, and be near the Turks and Caicos and southeastern Bahamas late Thursday (9/7). This loop was created with Band-13, one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager. Band-13, the so-called "clean" longwave infrared band, is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this visible-infrared "sandwich" animation of Hurricane Irma closing in on the Virgin Islands on September 6, 2017. Irma, a category 5 storm, has maximum sustained winds near 185 mph with higher gusts. This kind of imagery is known as a "sandwich product" because it combines imagery from two of the 16 spectral channels offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager: Band 2 (a visible band) and Band 13 (an infrared band). During processing, the transparency of the infrared band is increased and laid on top of the visible band. The result, as seen here, is imagery that offers spectacular views of storm attributes in rich detail. For example, the green, yellow, and red areas in this animation show the temperatures of cloud tops within the hurricane. The brighter colors indicate colder cloud tops, which indicate areas of greater storm intensity. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this infrared imagery of Category 5 Hurricane Irma churning toward the Caribbean on September 5, 2017. Note the gravity wave pattern emanating outward. As of 2.pm. EDT on September 5, 2017, Irma was centered about 180 miles east of the Antigua, moving toward the west near 14 mph, with maximum sustained winds near 185 mph with higher gusts. Download Video Credit: NASA SPoRT
Category 5 Hurricane Irma as seen by GOES-16 (left) and GOES-13 (right), captured on the morning of September 5, 2017. The animation on the left clearly shows the improved resolution and faster refresh rate of the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) over the current GOES imager. The rapid scanning rate of the ABI allows forecasters to monitor hurricanes in near-real time, improving track forecasts. The higher spatial resolution available from ABI provides greater accuracy of feature attributes, allowing for better characterization of small hurricane eyes, which also helps with intensity estimation and tracking. Download Video Credit: CIMSS
GOES-16 captured this 1-minute visible imagery of the eye of Hurricane Irma in the Atlantic Ocean on September 5, 2017. Irma, now a category 5 storm, is located about 270 miles east of Antigua. This animation, created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) Band 2 or red-visible band, shows how the increased resolution offered by ABI is providing meteorologists with a more detailed look at the behavior of clouds during storms. Download Video Credit: CIRA
As of 11:00 a.m. EDT on September 5, Irma was located about 225 miles east of Antingua, moving toward the west with maximum sustained winds of near 180 mph. Watch as Hurricane Irma moves toward the Leeward Islands in this GeoColor imagery captured by GOES-16 on September 5, 2017. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this loop of Hurricane Harvey showing cloud cover and optical lightning emissions on August 25-26, 2017. This loop was created by combining infrared imagery from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager, which is useful for determining the cloud features both day and night, with imagery from the satellite's Geostationary Lightning Mapper, which observes total lightning (both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground) day and night across the Western Hemisphere. Forecasters can use this kind of imagery depicting both cloud cover and lightning flashes to get a better sense of storm intensification and thunderstorm severity during dangerous weather conditions. Download Video Credit: CICS-MD
This GeoColor imagery from GOES-16 shows the Texas coast before Hurricane Harvey, on August 22, 2017, and after, on August 31. Note the brownish floodwaters filling Galveston Bay and streaming into the Gulf of Mexico. The haziness seen in the August 31 image is largely due to smoke that originated from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. Download Video Credit: NOAA
This GOES-16 infrared animation shows Tropical Storm Harvey making landfall just west of Cameron, Louisiana, at approximately 4:00 a.m. CDT on August 30, 2017. At 7:00 am CDT, NOAA's National Hurricane Center reported that Harvey was located 25 miles west-northwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and moving toward the north at about 9 miles per hour. Harvey's maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph with higher gusts. Download Video Credit: NOAA
This GeoColor animation from GOES-16 shows Hurricane Harvey moving over Texas the evening of August 25, 2017, into the morning of August 26, after making landfall. Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast at approximated 10:00 p.m. CDT on August 25, with maximum sustained winds are near 130 mph. As of 9:00 a.m. CDT on August 26, Harvey was located about 85 miles southeast of San Antonio, Texas, and moving north-northwest at 6 miles per hour. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this incredible 30-second visible imagery of the eye of Hurricane Harvey as it approached the coast of Texas on August 25, 2017. Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane that evening around 10:00 p.m. CDT. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor imagery of Hurricane Harvey, which is now a Category 3 storm, as of 3:00 p.m. CDT. NOAA's National Hurricane Center reported that Harvey was located about 70 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, and its maximum sustained winds have increased to 120 miles per hour. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this blended visible and infrared imagery of Hurricane Harvey today, August 25, 2017. As seen in this loop, Harvey's outer rainbands are beginning to reach the Texas coast. This loop was created by combining Band 13 (infrared) and Band 2 (visible) data from the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager into one animation. Doing so allows meteorologists to see a wider variety of features associated with Hurricane Harvey, such as the shadows cast by the taller cloud tops (as shown by the visible imagery) and the colder temperatures associated with the higher cloud tops (as shown by the brighter colors of the infrared imagery). Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this infrared imagery of Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf of Mexico on the morning of August 25, 2017. Harvey is now a Category 2 storm and (as of 7:00 am CDT on August 25) approximately 140 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas. This animation was created with Band-13 of GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager and shows cloud-top temperature, which is associated with storm intensity. The brighter the color, the colder the cloud top. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Follow the shadow of the moon as it moves west to east across the Northern Hemisphere in this GeoColor animation from GOES-16. The first total solar eclipse to move across the Continental United States in 99 years occurred on August 21, 2017, and the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) had a clear view of the moon’s shadow as it traveled across the path of totality. The eclipse began in Oregon, just after 1:15 p.m. EDT and traveled a diagonal course across the U.S. until it moved off the East Coast near Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:46 p.m. EST. Although the total eclipse — when the moon completely covered the sun— lasted up to two and a half minutes in some areas along the path of totality, other areas enjoyed a partial eclipse for two or more hours. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) captured the shadow of the moon moving through an area of severe weather featuring frequent cloud-to-ground lightning in the upper Midwest on August 21, 2017, during the total solar eclipse. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
Watch the moon's shadow move from coast to coast in this latest GeoColor animation from GOES-16 during the 2017 solar eclipse! The loop begins at 12:27 p.m. (eastern) and ends at 2:52 p.m. on August 21, 2017. The GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) had a clear view of the moon’s shadow as it traveled diagonally across the path of totality from the Pacific Northwest through South Carolina during the first total solar eclipse to move across the Continental United States in 99 years. Download Video Credit: CIRA
As seen in this GeoColor animation from GOES-16, the shadow of the moon has moved further inland from the Pacific and now covers a large portion of the northwestern U.S. The first total solar eclipse to move across the Continental United States in 99 years occurred on August 21, 2017, and the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) had a clear view of the moon’s shadow as it traveled diagonally across the path of totality from the Pacific Northwest through South Carolina. Download Video Credit: CIRA
The moon's shadow approaches the West Coast of the United Stated in this GOES-16 GeoColor animation from August 21, 2017, during the first total solar eclipse to move across the Continental United States in 99 years. The GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager followed the moon’s shadow through the path of totality from the Pacific Northwest through South Carolina. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Watch as the moon's shadow begins to darken the West Coast of the United States in this GeoColor animation of 2017 solar eclipse. The first total solar eclipse to move across the Continental United States in 99 years occurred on August 21, 2017, and the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) had a clear view of the moon’s shadow as it traveled diagonally across the path of totality from the Pacific Northwest through South Carolina. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This 12-hour GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) time-lapse animation shows lightning associated with widespread individual thunderstorms mushrooming in the Amazon basin on the afternoon and evening of August 10, 2017. Widespread afternoon thunderstorm activity is common entering the Southern Hemisphere spring. At the end of the animation horizontally extensive lightning flashes in the evening can be observed across the tops of the mature and long-lived electrified clouds. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
Tropical Storm Franklin moves over the Yucatan Peninsula in this GeoColor imagery captured by GOES-16 on August 8, 2017 as it moved west-northwest near 13 mph. Created by our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, the experimental GeoColor enhancement depicts clouds and snow cover (when present) in white, moonlit nighttime terrain in purple, city lights from major metropolitan areas in yellow, and daytime land and shallow-water features in true color. The city lights are a static background created with VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery from the Suomi NPP satellite. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this fire temperature and GeoColor imagery of hazy, smoke-filled skies over the Pacific Northwest on August 3, 2017. The smoke is from fires burning in the Canadian Province of British Columbia, Idaho, Washington State and Oregon. The fire temperature RGB imagery is created with Advanced Baseline Imager bands 7, 6, and 5 (shortwave and near infrared bands), which are used to detect hot spots. As seen here, the active hot spots show up as red, yellow, and white as the fires grow increasingly hotter. To make this animation, these two types of imagery were combined, with the fire temperature imagery made partially transparent and placed over the GeoColor, so both the fire's hot spots and smoke plume would be visible. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor animation of von Karman vortices below Isla Guadalupe in the eastern Pacific Ocean on August 2, 2017. Von Karman vortices typically form long straight lines over large flat areas of the ocean. However, geological features, like islands and volcanoes, can disrupt the flow of the wind and create spiral patterns, not dissimilar to the way large boulders create downstream eddies in rivers. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Watch as smoke from wildfires in British Columbia, Montana and Idaho spreads throughout the atmosphere in this GeoColor animation captured by GOES-16 on July 31 and August 1, 2017. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This 1-minute visible and infrared imagery from GOES-16 offers a look at the derecho that drifted across South Dakota and Minnesota, and into northern Iowa on July 19, 2017. The group of thunderstorms produced a heavy rainfall, strong winds estimated to be 70 to 80 miles per hour that downed trees and power lines, frequent lightning and possibly a tornado. This "sandwich" approach to viewing satellite imagery means that two spectral bands are fused together so they can be displayed at the same time. These are the Advanced Baseline Imager’s "red" visible band (reflected light) and the transparent infrared window (heat of the emitting surface) for a threshold of cold values. This approach retains both the cloud-top thermal structure as well as the finer visible band details such as over-shooting tops and transverse banding. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Wind pushes smoke from central California's Detwiler Fire to the northeast in this GOES-16 animation from July 18, 2017, that combines Fire Temperature and GeoColor imagery. The Fire Temperature RGB (red-green-blue) product is built using Advanced Baseline Imager bands 7, 6, and 5 (shortwave and near infrared bands), which are used to detect hot spots. As seen here, the active hot spots show up as red, yellow, and white as the fires grow increasingly hotter. To combine it with the GeoColor imagery, the RGB imagery is made partially transparent and placed over the GeoColor, so both the fire's hot spots and impressive smoke plume are visible. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 visible imagery of Category 4 Hurricane Fernanda in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean on July 14, 2017, as the storm moved west, located about 2,144 nautical miles from Hawaii. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) infrared imagery with overlaid Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) lightning flash event locations at one-minute timescales of strong thunderstorms over Wisconsin on July 12, 2017. This animation showcases the rapid one-minute imagery available from GOES-16, the new “clean” longwave infrared band on the ABI, and combined ABI and GLM data. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 one-minute imagery is shown of tornado-producing supercells in southwest Iowa on June 28, 2017. Band 2 on the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is used for detection of severe weather. With the better resolution of this band on the ABI (it has the finest resolution of all the ABI bands), paired with the more frequent one-minute imagery, it is easier for forecasters to characterize convective clouds – from agitated or towering developing cumulus to mature overshooting tops, which indicate a storm is severe. Download Video Credit: CIRA
The GOES-16 Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument captured this stunning imagery of a solar eruption on June 19, 2017. Solar prominences form when cool, dense plasma becomes trapped in helical, magnetic tubes (sometimes called flux ropes) that protrude in the solar atmosphere, or solar corona. Sometimes the magnetic forces in the solar atmosphere destabilize these features, and they erupt spectacularly into interplanetary space. This erupting prominence had an unusual, highly conical shape, with the erupting material closely confined to a tightly wound bundle of magnetic field lines. The initial eruption threw material far into space, causing a small coronal mass ejection. Had the coronal mass ejection occurred near the center of the sun, it would have carried some risk of generating space weather effects near Earth, but due to its location on the sun’s east limb, this eruption was directed harmlessly into interplanetary space. Download Video Credit: NOAA NCEI-CO
GOES-16 captures its first hurricane! Shown here is visible imagery of Hurricane Dora, the first of the 2017 season, spinning in the East Pacific Ocean on June 26, 2017.This animation was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) Band 2, or red-visible band. Band 2 which capitalizes on the higher-resolution capabilities of the ABI to offer a richer, more detailed look at the features of severe weather, such as Dora's eye and the rough texture of the storms that make up its rainbands. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Smoke from the Brian Head Fire in southwestern Utah can be seen in this GOES-16 GeoColor imagery on June 22, 2017. The color of the smoke differs from clouds, making it easy to discern the smoke in this animation. The GeoColor product was developed by our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). Download Video Credit: CIRA
This GeoColor imagery captured by GOES-16 shows Tropical Storm Cindy after it made landfall in Louisiana on the morning of June 22, 2017. Developed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), the experimental GeoColor enhancement displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In nighttime imagery, shown at the very beginning of this loop, liquid water clouds appear in shades of blue, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. The city lights are a static background created with VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery from the Suomi NPP satellite. In daytime imagery, which appears at the end of the loop, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Watch the amount of sunlight reaching the North Pole increase with the coming summer solstice in this animation of GOES-16 visible imagery. This loop shows one image each day between March 20, 2017, the date of the spring equinox, and June 21, 2017, the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the exact moment that the Northern Hemisphere is tilted the most toward the sun. As a result, June 21 was the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this infrared imagery of Tropical Storm Cindy in the Gulf of Mexico on June 20, 2017. At the time of this animation, Cindy was located about 265 miles south of Morgan City, Louisiana (355 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas) and had maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour. Band-13, the so-called "clean" long-wave infrared band, is one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager. Band-13 is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. As shown here, the imagery produced by this band offers spectacular views of severe weather, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red) associated with intense storms. Download Video Credit: CIRA
The GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) captured this brilliant imagery showing the lightning associated with weather system that became Tropical Storm Cindy over a three-day period beginning Sunday, June 18, 2017, and ending Wednesday, June 21. The first instrument of its kind in geostationary orbit, the lightning mapper observes total lightning (both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground) and provides a constant vigil for lightning flashes day and night across the Western Hemisphere. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
GOES-16 captured this GeoColor animation of a disturbance in the Atlantic known as "Potential Tropical Cyclone Two" (PTC 2) on June 19, 2017. Developed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), the experimental GeoColor enhancement displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In nighttime imagery, shown at the beginning of this loop, liquid water clouds appear in shades of blue, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. The city lights are a static background created with VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery from the Suomi NPP satellite. In daytime imagery, which appears at the end of the loop, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured this band-13 infrared imagery of an intense storm system moving across the Dakotas and into Minnesota on June 13, 2017. At 3:07 p.m. CDT, the National Weather Service's forecast office in Grand Forks, North Dakota, reported a severe thunderstorm near Felton (22 miles northeast of Fargo) that was moving to the northeast at 45 miles per hour. The storm had wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour, produced quarter-size hail, and heavy rain. Band-13, the so-called "clean" long-wave infrared band, is one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16. It is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. As shown here, the imagery produced by this band offers views of severe weather, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red) associated with intense storms, in great detail. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Watch fog dissipate in the river valleys of New York and Pennsylvania in this GOES-16 GeoColor animation from June 8, 2017.
In this loop, the fog (colored light blue at night and white in the day) dissipates as the increasing warmth after sunrise warms the air above the surface of the land. In the nighttime imagery (shown at the beginning of this loop) water looks black, and land appears gray and water clouds appear in shades of blue to distinguish them from ice clouds (in grayish-white). In daytime imagery, shown toward the end, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) captured this electrifying imagery of the lightning associated with supercell thunderstorms over Missouri on May 27, 2017. According to several media reports, the storms produced heavy rain, large hail, and strong (90 mph) winds that damaged property, downed trees, and disrupted power. There were also six confirmed tornadoes. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
GOES-16's lightning mapper captured this imagery of lightning in the Western Hemisphere on May 18, 2017. The animation begins the morning of May 18 with a full-disk view and then zooms in on the Americas and continental U.S. to focus on the lightning associated with the supercell thunderstorms over Kansas and Nebraska on May 18. It concludes in the early morning hours of May 19. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
GOES-16 captured this 30-second visible imagery of the strong storms that tore through northern Colorado on May 8, 2017. The storms brought more than 2 inches of rain and hail, some of it large, to parts of the state. This imagery was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's Band 2, or red-visible band, which capitalizes on the imager's enhanced resolution to offer meteorologists a closer, more detailed look at the structure of the clouds and the near-storm environment. For example, note the "overshooting" tops and rough texture of the tops of the storm clouds, which is indicative of strong vertical updrafts -- a characteristic of intense storms. 30-second imagery is produced when both of ABI's regional scan modes, each of which can produce an image every minute, are focused on the same area and then programmed to capture an image 30-seconds apart from one another. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This GOES-16 GeoColor imagery captured on May 6, 2017, shows a large smoke plume from the West Mims Fire burning in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The fire began on April 6 and is estimated at 130,942 acres as of May 7, 2017.This experimental GeoColor enhancement displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In daytime imagery, shown toward the end, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. In the nighttime imagery, liquid water clouds appear in shades of blue, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16 captured a low pressure system moving across the Southeast and Tennessee Valley on May 4, 2017. This system continued a northeasterly path towards the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on May 5. This low pressure system can be seen in this GeoColor imagery. Developed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), the experimental enhancement displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In nighttime imagery (shown at the beginning of this loop), liquid water clouds appear a shade of blue, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. In daytime imagery, land and shallow-water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: CIRA
This GOES-16 composite-color imagery from May 3, 2017, shows convection forming over the state of Florida, as well as smoke from wildfires near the Florida/Georgia border. This animation also shows how GOES-16 will give meteorologists a better view of the atmospheric conditions in the Western Hemisphere, thanks to the satellite's sophisticated Advanced baseline Imager (or ABI). With five-times greater coverage, four-times the spatial resolution, and three-times the spectral channels, the ABI will provide imagery like this that is superior to that of earlier GOES satellites, ultimately resulting in more accurate forecasts. Download Video Credit: CIRA
GOES-16's Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) captured this electrifying imagery of the lightning associated with the recent severe weather over the Mississippi Valley and southern Plains this past weekend. (The animation begins at approximately noon on Friday, April 28, 2017, and ends at midnight on Saturday, April, 29). According to a variety of media reports, the storms caused the deaths of at least 13 people, produced widespread heavy rain resulting in flash floods, high winds that down trees and left thousands without power, a late-season blizzard in Kansas, and several tornadoes. Download Video Credit: Lockheed Martin
Infrared imagery of the strong storms that erupted over parts of the southern Plains and Mississippi Valley April 28-30, 2017. According to several media reports, the storms caused the deaths of at least 13 people, produced widespread heavy rain resulting in flash floods, high winds that down trees and left thousands without power, a late-season blizzard in Kansas, and tornadoes in Texas, Mississippi, and Kentucky. This animation was created with Band 13, one of the new spectral bands offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager. Band 13, the so-called "clean" longwave infrared band, is primarily used to monitor clouds and storm intensity. As shown here, the imagery produced by this band offers spectacular views of meteorological phenomena, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red) associated with these storms, in rich detail. Download Video Credit: CIRA
ABI will be a boon for forecasters because it can scan three types of sectors simultaneously: the a full disk hemispheric view every 15 minutes, the contiguous United States every 5 minutes, and smaller mesoscale sectors that can be moved over regions of interest (e.g., areas of severe weather or other rapidly changing phenomena) every 60 seconds. Even better, if the mesoscale sectors are programmed to scan over the same area, they can provide imagery of severe weather as often as every 30 seconds! Download Video Credit: CIMSS
GOES-16 captured this 1-minute infrared imagery of the large and powerful storm system that brought hail and tornadoes to the Southeast on April 5, 2017. This imagery was produced with the "long wave" infrared band (aka: band 13) of GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) -- one of the new spectral bands that the imagers aboard the current GOES satellites (GOES-13 and -15) do not have. The reference to "1-minute" in its name refers to the frequency with which ABI captured an image of the storms. As seen here, the imagery produced by this band offers spectacular views of meteorological phenomena, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red) associated with these storms, in rich detail. Of particular note are what's known as "enhanced-V features" on some of the cloud tops, which are indicative of severe storm formation. Download Video Credit: CIRA
Strong storms formed along a sea breeze front on the western coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in this visible imagery captured by GOES-16 on April 3, 2017. This animation, which was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's (ABI) visible-red band (Band 2), clearly shows the "over-shooting tops" and rough texture of the tops of the storm clouds, which is indicative of strong vertical updrafts. In doing so, it provides a glimpse of how GOES-16 will enhance weather forecasting by providing meteorologists with high-resolution imagery of developing storms that they can use to analyze atmospheric or meteorological phenomena in near-real time. Download Video Credit: CIRA
After a period of very quiet conditions, the emergence of several active regions on the sun brought solar activity back to levels that haven't been seen in more than a year. As these active regions developed, they sparked a series of solar flares and eruptions, including the one in this imagery from GOES-16's SUVI, which was observed (with wavelength 195Å) on April 1 at about 21:45 UTC. The flare itself is the rapid, intense brightening you can see in the sun’s upper right quadrant toward the beginning of the animation, but the flare was also linked to an eruption, which escaped from the sun as a coronal mass ejection. The eruption is easy to spot as the blast of material headed into space from the flaring region. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation from GOES-16 shows a large plume of dust from the desert southwest being dragged eastward, across northwestern Texas and east Oklahoma, by a front moving over the high plains in the early morning hours of March 24, 2017. The dust appears as magenta or pink. The other colors denote the following: the dark blues are thin cirrus clouds, and the pale blue (on the right side of the image) indicates the surface (land and water) of the Earth. The bright colors shown here are the result of a "dust enhancement" -- an experimental data product created by scientists at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Based on infrared channel data, this RGB (red-green-blue) enhancement was created to help analysts monitor the evolution of dust storms. According to EUMETSAT, monitoring of dust in the atmosphere 24 hours a day can be a challenge because the appearance of dust in satellite imagery changes drastically from day to night. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
GOES-16 captured smoke plumes rising above the landscape of the southeastern United States on March 19, 2017. This GeoColor imagery was provided by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). The experimental GeoColor product displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In daytime imagery, land and water features appear as they do in true-color imagery. Smoke appears a slightly different color than clouds, so it's easy to identify. In nighttime imagery, liquid water clouds appear pinkish-red, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation of the early morning hours of March 14, 2017, shows the development of the nor'easter that brought snow and high winds to a large portion of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. States of emergency have been issued in Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In this imagery, the blue areas indicate moisture-rich clouds, while the orange and red areas show drier, warmer areas of the atmosphere. This imagery showcases Band 10 -- the low-level water vapor band -- of GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager, one of three water vapor bands available on the instrument. Band 10 allows meteorologists to better track areas and finer water vapor features in the lower-to-mid-levels of the troposphere, elevated cold fronts, low-level boundaries of air masses, and more. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
One-minute visible imagery of the winter storm that dumped freezing rain and snow over a large portion of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on March 14, 2017. This imagery was created with the Advanced Baseline Imager's Band 2, or red-visible band, which capitalizes on the imager's enhanced resolution to offer meteorologists a closer, more detailed look at the structure of the clouds and the near-storm environment. Note the formation of the low-level circulation just off the coast of Delaware, the shadows cast by the high clouds onto the lower clouds, and the wave features atop the cloud bands moving from the southwest to the northeast. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
The sun rises over Florida in this GOES-16 GeoColor animation from March 8, 2017. In addition to the smoke from the 7,500-acre brush fires near Naples, this imagery captures the formation of cumulus clouds over the sunshine state -- a result of the land heating up faster than the ocean as the sun's rays deliver warmth to the area. Developed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) in partnership with the Naval Research Laboratory, the experimental GeoColor enhancement displays geostationary satellite data in different ways depending on whether it is day or night. In the nighttime imagery, shown at the beginning of this animation, liquid water clouds appear pinkish-red, ice clouds are grayish-white, water looks black, and land appears gray. The city lights at the beginning are a static background created with VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery. In the daytime portion of this animation, the land and shallow-water features (the turquoise areas in the ocean) appear as they do in true-color imagery. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
On March 6, 2017, a potent weather system moved into the central plains and generated a plethora of dynamic weather, including high winds, large hail, and tornadoes, in addition to fanning a number of large grass fires. This 500-m resolution visible loop from GOES-16 shows the formation of the storms in eastern Nebraska just after 1 p.m. CST. The one-minute update frequency allows forecasters to track individual cumulus cloud formation and to see the up-down pulsing nature of the storms' overshooting tops. The first large hail report occurred just after 2 p.m. in eastern Nebraska and the first tornado at 5:30 pm near Harcourt, Iowa. Storms continued into the overnight hours in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and produced at least 36 tornadoes and many high wind and large hail reports. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
Lightning observed by the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) illuminates the storms developing over southeast Texas on the morning of February 14, 2017, in this animation of GLM lightning events overlaid on Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) cloud imagery. Frequent lightning is occurring with the convective cells embedded in this severe weather system. The green cross indicates the location of Houston, and green dotted lines indicate the Texas coastline. This animation, rendered at 25 frames per second, simulates what your eye might see from above the clouds. GLM perceives the scene at 500 frames per second, and can distinguish the location, intensity and horizontal propagation of individual strokes within each lightning flash. Monitoring the flash rate from convective cells and their extent can help forecasters improve tornado and severe weather forecasts and warnings and their impending threat to the public. At the time of this animation, the storm cell in the center of the frame was reported by the NWS to have produced one of a number of tornadoes and damaging winds spawned by the storm complex. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation from January 29, 2017, shows a large coronal hole in the sun’s southern hemisphere from the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) on board NOAA's new GOES-16 satellite. The animation captures the sun in the 304 Å wavelength, which observes plasma in the sun's atmosphere up to a temperature of about 50,000 degrees. When combined with the five other wavelengths from SUVI, observations such as these give solar physicists and space weather forecasters a complete picture of the conditions on the sun that drive space weather. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
Dust clouds sweep across north-central Texas in this 1-km GOES-16 composite color animation from 2030 to 2310 UTC on February 23, 2017.
As this animation suggests, the ability of GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) to provide such high-resolution imagery in color will be a boon to meteorologists as it will make it easier for them to identify different atmospheric or meteorological phenomena, such as dust from other types of clouds. As shown here, the brown-colored dust is easy to differentiate from smaller, white clouds mixed in with it.
Composite color images from GOES-16 are created by combining data from three of ABI's 16-bands -- band 1 (blue visible), band 2 (red visible) and band 3 (near-infrared vegetation) -- to produce a range of colors within visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum (think the colors of the rainbow, ROYGBIV). Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This comparison of GOES-16 ABI and GOES-13 imager shortwave infrared (3.9 µm) data shows a number of grass fires burning near Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida on February 20, 2017. In the left panel, GOES-16 imagery at 30-second intervals is shown, while the right panel displays GOES-13 imagery at routine 15-30 minute intervals. The warmest shortwave infrared brightness temperatures are enhanced with yellow to red colors (with red being the hottest). Note the many advantages of the 30-second GOES-16 imagery: (1) new fire starts are detected sooner in time; (2) the fire behavior (intensification vs dissipation) can be better monitored; (3) the intensity of the fires is more accurately depicted with the 2-km resolution GOES-16 data vs the 8-km resolution GOES-13 data; (4) numerous brief fires are not detected at all in the 15-30 minute interval GOES-13 imagery (especially south and southeast of Lake Okeechobee, during the 2100-2115 UTC time period). Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This 30-second rapid-scan animation from GOES-16 demonstrates the very high spatial and temporal resolution from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). The rapid scan sector was set over north-central Argentina, which includes the city of Córdoba, where it captured some expected severe storms during an active late-summer weather pattern on January 21, 2017. This region is known to have some of the most extreme storms in the world. The animation was created with the ABI band 2, its primary visible channel. Many interesting and important features of the near storm environment and convective clouds themselves are readily apparent. Differential motion between the developing thunderstorms and the low level clouds indicates the presence of converging low-level air leading to the rapid development of these storms. Apparent rotation in the boiling cloud tops suggests intense updrafts or vertical motion in these storms. Severe hail was reported with at least one of the storms in the center of the domain around 2130 UTC. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation of GOES-16 rapid-scan near-infrared imagery shows the movement of thunderstorms over the Texas Gulf Coast on February 14, 2017. This animation showcases the features the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) can see with band 5 (snow/ice band) – a new spectral band unavailable on previous GOES imagers. Note the clarity of the clouds, both liquid (brighter) and ice (darker), as well as the waves and shadows that can be seen in this loop. In addition, rapid-scan imagery like that seen in this animation will help forecasters monitor storms associated with severe weather as the spacecraft can capture one image of a storm every 30 seconds. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This water vapor imagery from GOES-16 shows the intensification of the winter storm that brought heavy snow to Maine and other areas of the Northeast yesterday, February 13, 2017. According to NOAA's Weather Prediction Center, as the winter storm in the Northeast moved off the coast and over the northwestern Atlantic, its surface pressure dropped from 996 hectopascals (hPA) at 11:00 am yesterday to 972 hPA at 10:30 pm, a drop of 24 hPA in 18.5 hours. (Note: A hectopascal (hPA) is a unit of pressure equal to a millibar). The the rapid development of a cyclonic circulation wherein the surface pressure falls by at least 24 millibars in a 24-hour period is often referred to as a bombogenesis. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This water vapor imagery from February 9, 2017, shows the early stages of a developing winter storm along the East Coast as seen by both GOES-16 (left) and GOES-13 (right). The current GOES imager only has one mid-level water vapor band, while the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on GOES-16 has three. This allows ABI to capture water vapor features and atmospheric motion within more layers of the atmosphere. Also, the finer resolution of the ABI (approximately 2 km) as compared to the imager aboard GOES-13 (approximately 4 km) shows the fine detail of small-scale mountain waves that aren’t visible in the GOES-13 imagery. Similarly, during the later portion of the animation, a post-cold-frontal trough can be seen offshore moving southward in the imagery from GOES-16, but not in the GOES-13 imagery. The faster processing afforded by ABI is also evident, allowing for quicker detection of fast-developing convection and other phenomena. Download Video | Annotated Image Credit: NOAA/NASA
A strong coastal winter storm brought heavy snow and strong winds to portions of the northern Middle Atlantic through northern New England on February 9, 2017. The development and path of this intense storm can be seen in this water vapor imagery from GOES-16. Of particular interest in this animation is the improved spatial resolution compared to current GOES. The satellite's Advanced Baseline Imager offers 16 spectral bands, three of which are water vapor bands -- this imagery was created with band 10. These additional water vapor bands enable meteorologists to see further down into the mid-troposphere in clear sky regions compared to the current GOES water vapor band. It also allows them better characterize the total amount of moisture in the atmosphere that can turn into rain and snow. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
“Punch” or “hole streak” clouds are formed when part of a liquid water cloud glaciates, most likely due to interactions with an airplane. These clouds can be seen in this animation showing the sky over northern North Carolina on February 1, 2017. The visible imagery on the top half is from Advanced Baseline Imager instrument aboard the recently launched GOES-16, while the visible imagery on the bottom is from the imager aboard GOES-13 (aka: GOES East). Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation of the severe storm system that produced tornadoes in southeastern Louisiana on February 7, 2017, shows the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager’s 2 visible, 4 near-infrared and 10 infrared spectral bands in time sequence. Monitoring the weather in different wavelengths allows meteorologists to better analyze different layers of the atmosphere, distinguish between cloud types and other phenomena and generally see the Earth's atmosphere and surface in greater, more vivid detail. For example, ABI band 5 (also known as the Snow/ice near infrared band), which is new to GOES satellites, will help meteorologists distinguish glaciated or ice clouds from other cloud types. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This visible animation from GOES-16 shows the tornadic storms that swept through Louisiana on February 7, 2017. As this imagery illustrates, the high-resolution offered by GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager will allow forecasters to see meteorological phenomena in vivid detail. For example, in this loop, note how the top of the tornadic storm can be seen passing along the southern coast of Lake Pontchartrain. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This animation from GOES-16 shows the movement of severe weather from central United States into the Northeast, where it resulted in wet and wintry weather for travelers across the region. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
The animation of full disk images shows the continental United States in the two visible, four near-infrared and 10 infrared channels on ABI. These channels help forecasters distinguish between differences in the atmosphere like clouds, water vapor, smoke, ice and volcanic ash. GOES-16 has three-times more spectral channels than earlier generations of GOES satellites. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
Clouds swirls in the sky over Florida and the ocean surrounding it in this mesmerizing animation from NOAA's next-generation geostationary satellite GOES-16. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This area of Mexico and Central America is seen from GOES-16 with a largely cloud-free view. A fire and its associated smoke are evident over southern Mexico near the coast. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This composite color full-disk visible animation is from 1:07 p.m. EDT on January 15, 2017 and was created using several of the 16 spectral channels available on the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument. Seen here are North and South America and the surrounding oceans. Download Video Credit: NOAA/NASA
This data visualization shows actual lightning measurements captured by an array of ground-based lighting detectors capable of tracing how lightning propagates through the atmosphere and simulates how the GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper will monitor atmospheric flashes.
Download Video | Transcript Credit: NASA Goddard Multimedia