CIMSS Satellite Blog

GOES-16 Lower-level (7.3 µm) images, with hourly plots of buoy and ship reports [click to play MP4 animation]

Water vapor signatures of a phenomenon known as a “sting jet” have been shown previously on this blog here, here and here. GOES-16 Lower-level (7.3 µm) Water Vapor images (above) revealed another classic “scorpion tail” signature of a sting jet associated with the rapidly-intensifying storm off the coast of North Carolina on 04 January 2018.

The passenger cruise ship Norwegian Breakaway was en route to New York City from the Bahamas when it experienced very strong winds and rough seas early in the morning on 04 January (media story) — it appears as though the ship may have been in the general vicinity of this sting jet feature, where intense winds were descending to the surface from higher levels of the atmosphere:

Interpolating https://t.co/nNODxB61uj suggests in that vicinity/time. This is NAM nest 06z initialization, near time of https://t.co/NG2ytIaztM. In any event, sailed directly into core of what models correctly predicted to be one of most extreme #bombogenesis rates on record. http://pic.twitter.com/rcQK7IP2Qv

— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) January 7, 2018

The sting jet signature was also apparent on GOES-16 Mid-level (6.9 µm) and Upper-level (6.2 µm) Water Vapor images (below).

GOES-16 Mid-level (6.9 µm) images, with hourly plots of buoy and ship reports [click to play MP4 animation]

GOES-16 Upper-level (6.2 µm) images, with hourly plots of buoy and ship reports [click to play MP4 animation]

The sting jet signature was also evident in a Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) image at 0614 UTC or 1:14 AM Eastern time (below). Through the clouds, the faint glow of city lights in far eastern North Carolina could be seen along the left edge of the image. The cloud features shown using the “visible image at night” VIIRS Day/Night Band were brightly-illuminated by the Moon, which was in the Waning Gibbous phase at 92% of Full. A VIIRS instrument is aboard the JPSS series of satellites, such as the recently-launched NOAA-20.

Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) image [click to enlarge]

from CIMSS Satellite Blog http://ift.tt/2FafnzS