Today operations were centered over Bismarck, ND, where a large storm complex was in progress much of the day.  The storms developed near a warm front, and benefitted from an approaching short wave trough as well as orographic lift and differential heating.  You can see the extent of the anvils from storms centered over southern ND and northern SD.  This complex dominated the local environment and seemed to take advantage of most of the local instability.

The new optical flow winds tool uses 1-minute imagery from GOES-16/17 ABI imagery to provide high resolution wind estimates at 2-km resolution using an optical flow technique.  You can plot the winds in different layers, from 1000-800mb up to 100-50mb.  As you can see, it is mainly the higher level winds that were plotted above the anvil plumes, and show the divergence at the higher levels of the storm.  

Taking a look at the SPC mesoanalysis at 300mb for this time, you can see the speeds and directions roughly match the 400-200mb winds plotted on the optical flow plots.

Winds closer to the surface did not plot as much, mainly owing to the dense cloud cover the satellite was seeing.  After some discussion, surface plots were added to the 1000-800mb layer, which helped to orient forecasters.  Forecasters still need to mentally adjust the satellite imagery which was overlaid for parallax.

I think the optical wind flow could be useful to investigate storm strength and maintenance.  It could be helpful in both warning operations and for IDSS purposes.  The storm complex in question lasted for at least 12 hours, and produced wind damage, large hail, and torrential rains leading to flash flooding. 

– Dana Scully