Below is an image showing the default 4-panel procedure provided. The upper level is the Octane Speed product on top of the Red Visible Band (Channel 2), the upper right is the Octane Direction product on top of the Red Visible Band (Channel 2), the lower left is the Clean IR Band (Ch. 13), the lower right is the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB.

Personally, have at times struggled with what exactly the speed and direction products are showing…but especially the direction. Decided to plot the GOES East Derived Winds onto the imagery, as I am used to looking at wind direction with vectors/arrows/etc. Below is the same Octane image with the 250-350mb wind barbs. When comparing the sampling/data readout of the Octane direction and the derived winds, they were within a few degrees.

Perhaps an option going forward would be to have a single panel Octane procedure with the speed shown as the color, continue to have the direction in the background that shows up when sampling the data (image below), but then at least have the option to load the the direction data as an arrow/barb/etc. Having the barbs show up as the default in a dense enough of a manner that it’s useful may use up too much AWIPS power and drag it down.

– Bubbles