5 Musings as November comes to an end

The month of November is wrapping up and we now head into the season in which people start asking (more) about important things (like snow). It's also the end of a couple of other seasons though. Here's more on that, as well as a look ahead to this weekend's beautiful weather, a major weather pattern shift on the horizon, and why a satellite that produces amazing imagery went dark today.

1. November 30 marks the end of what we in the business refer to as "meteorological fall." We all know that REAL (astronomical) winter doesn't start for a few weeks yet. But weather folks have to be different. So for us, winter starts tomorrow. That's mainly because when computing climate statistics and so forth it's much easier to break the seasons by in 3-month groupings at the start/end of a month. September-November was fall, and it ended warm. Check out these numbers: 63, 68, 66, 67, 68, 67, 68. Those are the high temperatures for the past week. Who says we don't get fall? For the meteorological season, our unofficial average temperature was 65.1°, or roughly 1 degree above the long-term average. Precipitation totaled 7.46", which is a bit over 5" below average, with only 1.81" of that falling in November. That results in conditions like this:

The U.S. Drought Monitor, zoomed into the Lower Mississippi Valley, shows "abnormally dry" conditions creeping into the metro from the south.

2. November 30 also marks the official end of the Atlantic hurricane season (and all the people say "Amen!"). There's no way else to slice it, it's been a brutal year. From Harvey in Texas, to Irma in Florida and the southeast, to Maria in Puerto Rico, this will be one for the record books. I don't necessarily believe in "we were due," but it had been 12 years since the last U.S. landfall of a major hurricane (if you don't count "non-tropical" Sandy). Here's a summation of the numbers:

Table showing how the 2017 Atlantic #hurricane season ranks historically. It will end up a top 10 season by most tropical cyclone metrics. pic.twitter.com/e5fb8cgwn2

— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) November 28, 2017

17 named storms, ten hurricanes, six majors, and two category 5's. And a bunch of other records broken. Good riddance! (If you want to hear what The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore had to say about the season, check out the Carolina Weather Group episode that aired just last night, with yours truly on the panel!)

Preliminary storm tracks for the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Click for larger view. (NHC)

3. So when will this warm weather end? Not for several more days! With a fairly tranquil weather pattern nationwide for the next few days, no major fronts are expected through the weekend. We'll see mild weather with highs in the 60s continuing into early next week as high pressure aloft dominates.

The GFS model for the jetstream level of the atmosphere, valid Monday morning, shows a ridge of high pressure over our region (the large "hill" in the eastern U.S.). However, the first signs of a significant pattern shift can be seen in the western U.S. where a large trough (the "dip" in the jet stream) can be found. (PivotalWx)

Precipitation forecast through Sunday evening. The beginning of the next system to affect our area shows up in the Northwest U.S. (NOAA)

As for weekend activities, the forecast is grand! Here's a planner for Saturday, which features the St. Jude Memphis Marathon, a Tiger football watch party at the Liberty Bowl, and Christmas parades among other things. You can find the official MWN Forecast here or in our app.

4. What brings the warm weather to an end and how cold does it get? If you looks above again at the jetstream forecast for Monday morning, you'll see a huge dip over the western U.S. As that shifts east, it "dips" even further south, allowing cold air from Canada to spill south into the eastern U.S. Early signs are that this pattern - dominated by an eastern U.S. trough and western U.S. ridge - could last right into the middle of December. There will be ebbs and flows of course, but much colder air will be found in the eastern U.S., including the Mid-South, in this pattern.

As the pattern shifts, watch for the potential for some heavy rain and thunderstorms near a front that moves through sometime between next Monday night and Tuesday night. A relief from the dry weather, but also the end of fall most likely. Below is what this morning's GFS (American) model ensemble said about temperatures for the next 2 weeks. Note that these are not exactly right, but give you a good idea of the trend.

The GFS model is run multiple times with slightly different parameters to create an "ensemble" of potential solutions. Above is the average high and low temperatures for the next 2 weeks from this ensemble. (WxBell) 

5. Finally, November 30 also brought to an end (if everything goes well) the "preliminary, non-operational" phase of GOES-16, our new awesome-sauce meteorological satellite that was launched just about one year ago. It's been in testing phase for much of this year and has provided dramatic and beautiful imagery from 22,500 miles up. For the next 3 weeks, its propulsion systems are pushing it a bit further east from its test location, where it will become fully operational in mid-December as GOES-East. This day will be nearly as monumental in the meteorological community as the day it was launched and the day it sent back its first images. For more on GOES-16 (formerly GOES-R) see this blog post.

By this time next year, its sister satellite (GOES-S/17) will likely be operational over the west coast as GOES-West. A new chapter in satellite meteorology is being written! Below was the parting image, in natural color, from GOES-16 this morning at 7:32am CST.

Erik Proseus
MWN Meteorologist

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GOES-16: A Weather and Climate Game-Changer

When it comes to weather forecasting, meteorologists are often only as good as the technology and data they have access to. Perhaps one of the greatest leaps forward for the weather enterprise in the 21st Century is not even on this planet, but rather orbiting well above it. One satellite has the capability of changing how we see many facets of our atmosphere.

GOES-16, the satellite formerly known as GOES-R, is the latest and greatest in a long line of weather satellites placed into orbit by the United States. (Geostationary satellites use a letter designation prior to reaching orbit, then switch to a number once reaching orbit.) Launched back on November 19, 2016, the satellite has been undergoing a number of post-launch tests for the past several months. The plan is for GOES-16 to be providing its full suite of data and imagery in the coming month or so, with certification to be "fully operational" before the end of 2017. In the meantime, some non-operational or “unofficial” data is available, leaving many atmospheric scientists gawking and giving hope that this new generation of satellites will further expand our knowledge of weather and climate, both on earth and in space.

The GOES-16 satellite is equipped with many new pieces of technology that separate it from its predecessors. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is the "camera" that points towards earth and contains many more than 3 times as many imagery bands, or channels, as the current GOES satellites. Meanwhile, perhaps the most unique new tool aboard GOES-16 is the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), which will allow scientists to gain a new perspective of where lightning occurs via a sensing platform in geosynchronous orbit over the western hemisphere.

The GOES-16 satellite system has five unique instruments for sensing the environment, from space to earth. Three of those are for monitoring space weather and the other two (the Advanced Baseline Imager [ABI] and the Geostationary Lightning Mapper[GLM]) sense the atmosphere surrounding the earth. (Image courtesy: NASA)

Satellite data is incredibly valuable to meteorologists as it provides a unique perspective of our weather and planet. While ground-based instrumentation is important, that merely allow us to observe what is occurring at the surface, as with weather stations, or in the lowest several thousand feet of the atmosphere with radar. Satellite imagery, like visible, infrared, and water vapor loops, provides a top-down view of what is going on above us that cannot be gathered from other sources. The imagery from GOES-16 has also been greatly improved, providing more frequent updates, with higher resolution, that can be zoomed-in to focus on active weather phenomena.

A comparison of the full-disk imagery available from a current GOES satellite (GOES-13, right) and the new GOES satellite (GOES-16, left). (Image courtesy: NOAA/NASA)

Think of it this way. You are going to replace a digital camera that takes pictures with a resolution of 5 megapixels, but only every 5 seconds. The new camera you buy has 20 megapixel resolution and can snap a picture every second! That is a great improvement right? 4 times better resolution and 5 times faster! Now add in that your old camera had 5 filters that could be applied and your new one has 16. That's how GOES-16 compares to its predecessors!

So what makes this satellite so important for the future of weather and science? Those who study weather, climate, space, and other environmental factors have reached the limit of what can be observed with the current satellites that have been in existence for about 20 years. GOES-16 will provide a wealth of new, and very valuable, information for climate scientists, meteorologists, and other researchers for the next couple of decades. In fact, an identical satellite, GOES-17, will be launched into orbit in spring 2018. While GOES-16 will be moved into an orbit that best covers the eastern U.S. in the next several months, GOES-17 will take up the position over the western U.S. within the next two years to provide complete coverage of the western hemisphere with the new satellites.

With the fire-hose of  new data, we will be able to observe the atmosphere above us with greater precision than ever before. This allows for improvements in severe weather warning lead time, detection of flash flood threats and wildfires in remote areas, volcanic ash that is a significant hazard to air travel, quicker recognition of rapid changes in tropical cyclone strength, and even dust over the oceans that hinders their formation. As we learn how to use the wealth of GOES-16 data, it will become a vital tool for atmospheric scientists for years to come.

Stunning #GOES16 visible imagery at 60 sec update over the Mid-South! Such an asset on days like today. (Non-operational test imagery) pic.twitter.com/2YWBvEDHIW

— MemphisWeather.net (@memphisweather1) March 30, 2017

3:30 Here's how our fancy new (non-op, test mode) #GOES16 satellite sees the storms heading this way! #memstorm #ARwx #21stCenturyWeather pic.twitter.com/R1ooBdAeUg

— MemphisWeather.net (@memphisweather1) April 26, 2017

You can learn more about GOES-16 and the entire series of GOES satellites, as well as view additional imagery, by visiting the GOES-R website hosted by NOAA and NASA. We have already shared some very cool "preliminary, non-operational" imagery from GOES-16 on our social media channels, such as that shown above, and we look forward to bringing you much more in the coming months and years!

One of the early images beamed back to Earth from GOES-16 shows an oblique view of  our planet with the moon in the background. (Image courtesy NOAA)

Alex Herbst, Meteorologist

MWN Intern

Erik Proseus
MWN Meteorologist

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GOES-East satellite capturing snow, contrails, and more!

Yesterday we saw snow cover over Arkansas and eastern Texas and Oklahoma on satellite imagery. This morning, more cool-ness from 22,500 miles up! A visible shot from GOES-East shows snow cover in northeast AR that is not obscured by clouds (the brighter white area), contrails from jet airplanes at cruise altitude, thin cirrus overhead the snow/contrails as high level moisture streams over the area, and even marine cumulus clouds created by 35-40 degree air blowing over much warmer water in the Gulf!  Click the image for a full-size version with more detail.


--Erik Proseus, MWN Meteorologist

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GOES-14 comes out of hibernation to produce stunning satellite imagery

I wanted to share the image below for a couple of reasons.  If you aren't familiar with it, this is a "full disk" satellite image.  GOES (or geo-synchronous orbiting satellites) orbit the Earth in one spot (hence their orbits are synchronized with the rotation of the Earth) at an altitude of 22,500 miles.  They not only take sectorized images of portions of the Earth on routine basis, but every 3 hours (typically), they take one gigantic picture of the entire Earth - a full disk image.

The full-disk image below was taken by GOES-14 at 12:45pm CDT today.  Why is this important?  Because ordinarily it wouldn't have taken it.  The satellite that would normally take this picture, GOES-13 (or GOES-East, covering the eastern U.S. and Atlantic), went belly-up yesterday!  For over 18 hours, meteorologists were left scrounging for occasional and partial images of the eastern U.S. from other satellites.  

Finally, at 12:45pm, GOES-14 was awaken out of "standby" mode by NOAA satellite engineers in the U.S.  to provide backup (mutual aid as firefighters might call it) so they could figure out what was going on with GOES-13.  The image below was the first provided by the backup satellite.

The other interesting thing about this picture is circled and labelled.  If you ever wondered how minuscule we and our local weather are compared to, well, the entire globe, look closely at this image.  A little speck of white (circled in red) was our morning cloud cover and showers and thunderstorms that passed by just to our southwest, from east-central AR into northwest MS.  In the grand scheme of this image, they're nothing. To those in AR who received hail, lightning and thunder, and heavy rain, they were disruptive.  Now pretend you're a computer model and this is one of your inputs.  What forecast do you produce for Memphis, TN?  Typically a very accurate one, which I find simply stunning! 

Click the image for a large view and check out the detail - again, from 22,500 miles in the sky!

GOES-14 first full disk image out of standby mode - September 24, 2012, 12:45pm CDT (17:45 UTC)

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GOES-13 begins operational life as GOES-East

A new generation of weather-watching satellites comes online in an official capacity tomorrow, April 14, 2010 at 2:34pm CDT. At that time, GOES-13 (GOES-N when originally launched in May 2006) will replace GOES-12 as the operational satellite covering the eastern portion of the United States and Northern Hemisphere. It will frequently be referred to simply as GOES-East. The satellite will maintain a vigilant watch from an altitude of 22,240 statute miles at 75 degrees west longitude, beaming back images every 15 minutes around the clock. It's expected lifespan is 10 years or more. The current satellite, GOES-12, will move to a position at 60 degrees west in which it can cover South America following the decommissioning of GOES-10, which had that duty until December 2009.

GOES-13 is the first of three third-generation NOAA satellites (GOES N-P) to go into full operation. GOES-O (-14) and -P are in orbit in standby mode (GOES-P having just arrived in orbit in the past month). The GOES satellites (which stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) provide meteorologists and reseachers with a vital tool in monitoring weather conditions and tracking severe storms. They maintain a geosynchronous orbit - staying in the same position over the earth at all times.

The next generation of GOES satellites, the highly-anticipated GOES-R series, will carry even more advanced technology than the current satellites, including much higher spatial and temporal resolution and realtime lightning mapping. The first is scheduled to be launched aboard a Delta IV rocket in 2015.

For more information on the GOES satellites, visit these links:

GOES on Wikipedia

GOES-13 on Wikipedia

List of GOES satellites

Info on GOES N-P from NASA

NOAA's Office of Satellite Operations

Current imagery from GOES satellites

More imagery from NASA

Info on the GOES-R satellite (GOES-R.gov)

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GOES-14 produces first full disk infrared image

If you recall from a previous post on this blog, or from other sources, a new GOES satellite was launched into space aboard a Delta IV rocket in late June to help watch Earth's weather from 22,000 miles up. This satellite reached geostationary orbit on July 8 and was named GOES-14. It produced its first full disk (hemispheric) infrared image earlier today, which included a view of Tropical Depressions Ana and Claudette, Hurricane Bill, and Tropical Storm Guillermo in the central Pacific. Check out the photogenic first look at the western hemisphere from GOES-14 above(click for larger image).

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New GOES satellite reaches orbit

In case you missed it, Boeing/NASA/NOAA sent a new weather satellite into space onboard a Delta IV rocket back on June 27. This satellite, named GOES-O (the letter, not the number 0), has been maneuvering around to get into final orbit for the past couple weeks and on Wednesday reached its final destination at 22,300 miles up at 89.5 degrees West longitude. At that time, it was re-named GOES-14.

Up to this point, Boeing has been calling the shots for GOES-O/14, but next Friday, the reins will be handed off the NASA for approximately 5 months while it completes on-orbit checkout. The first image from the new satellite will be produced July 27. Then, the spacecraft gets handed over to NOAA, where it becomes a "hot spare," fully ready to jump in in case of a failure of one of the other GOES satellites that are currently providing the shots of the weather over the western hemisphere.

Those satellites, which are one generation older than GOES-14, are GOES-11 (or GOES-West, covering the western U.S.) and GOES-12 (or GOES-East, covering the eastern U.S.). There are two other GOES satellites floating over the Earth - GOES-10 covering South America and GOES-13, a sister to GOES-14 and also in standby mode.

For more information on GOES-O, check out this NASA site or NOAA's Office of Satellite Operations.

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