CIMSS Satellite Blog

Suomi NPP VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) and Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) images [click to enlarge]

Suomi NPP VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) and Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) images (above) showed a large Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) that had moved over West Texas during the nighttime hours on 12 June 2016. Cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were as cold as -83º C (violet color enhancement), and a number of bright streaks were seen on the Day/Night Band image due to cloud illumination by intense lightning activity (there were around 5000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes associated with this MCS).

This MCS produced heavy rainfall, with as much as 3.44 inches reported near Lomax (NWS Midland PNS). An animation of radar reflectivity (below, courtesy of Brian Curran, NWS Midland Texas) showed the strong convective cells moving southward (before the Midland radar was struck by lightning and rendered out of service).

Midland, Texas radar reflectivity [click to play MP4 animation]

During the subsequent daytime hours, GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) images (below) revealed the presence of a large and well-defined Mesoscale Convective Vrtex (MCV) as the cirrus canopy from the decaying MCS eroded. An excellent discussion of this MCV was included in a forecast discussion from NWS Dallas/Fort Worth. New thunderstorms were seen to develop over North Texas during the late afternoon and early evening hours as the MCV approached — there were isolated reports of small hail and damaging winds with this convection (SPC storm reports).

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) images [click to play animation]

A sequence of Visible images from POES AVHRR (0.86 µm), Terra MODIS (0.65 µm), and Suomi NPP VIIRS (0.64 µm) (below) showed snapshots of the MCV at various times of the day.

Visible images from POES AVHRR (0.86 µm), Terra MODIS (0.65 µm), and Suomi NPP VIIRS (0.64 µm) [click to enlarge]

from CIMSS Satellite Blog http://ift.tt/1UuQDRY