SPG Blog Post Day 3

Posted in DSS, Lightning Stoplight, LightningCast, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI on by Kevin Thiel.

Disclaimer: I had alot of internet and AWIPS issues today :-(. So I mostly got experience with DSS procedures. After IT helped me (Thank you!!) I was able to get some warnings out. I’m sorry for the issues!

Today, we looked at a slight risk out in Idaho. A relatively strong low pressure system with an associated cold front moved through, providing decent parameters for wind concerns in the PIH CWA. This event featured some initially shallow pop-up convection, that quickly blew up to storms that were producing 70-85mph winds over eastern Idaho! Very interesting setup, because the only really notable instability initially noticed was the impressive DCAPE (1000-2000 J/kg), and decent lapse rates. Was hard to notice before reports rolled in, since the storms really did not look impressive on satellite or radar.

Figure 1: WVT (left: colored color map, right: greyscale)
  • During the quiet period of the event in Idaho, after sending out Slack messages and a briefing slide to partners, I played around with the color maps for the WVT product. This one is based off of a WV map product that SLC uses. You can see the seabreeze move in pretty well during this time frame (lighter green = moisture).
    • I sent this color map in the Slack group!
Figure 2: LightningCast Stoplight over PIH
  • LightningCast was great today for having multiple DSS events!
    • This is an image where I made the colormap slightly transparent so you can see the imagery underneath the stoplight colors a bit more clearly.
    • What isn’t visible here, was that I had the “0-10” range blinking, to help grab attention quickly.
    • I also used the SuperDashboard today! I really liked it – especially when I had AWIPS issued and had to rely on desktop products more than AWIPS.
      • I oddly enough couldn’t get both events on the dashboard at the same time? Both events existed and had links. At first, it was because they started at different times because I had entered the wrong time zone. But, when both events should have been active, only one appeared. The links themselves sent to my email, however, worked just fine!
-Kelvin-Helm
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Overview: Week 2, Day 3

Posted in Daily Summaries, OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI, SZA Imagery on by Kevin Thiel.

10 AM

Wednesday presented a ‘7-10 split’ of severe potential, with thunderstorms expected in the Great Basin and Mid-Atlantic regions. Most of this was driven by a Slight Risk from the 13 Z SPC Convective outlook, driven by 15% CIG1 wind probabilities. Timing and moisture were a little less certain out west, while convection was more certain in the east but had limited deep instability and subsequent severe weather potential. After some discussion, we localized to the Pittsburgh, PA (PBZ) and Pocatello, ID (PIH) offices.

During the morning discussion we played the same comparison game between the SZA and traditional imagery, but this time for the upper great lakes region around sunset on Tuesday, using archived imagery from CIRA-SLIDER. Forecasters were asked when the imagery no longer became useful to them, and here’s their reported times when looking at the same loop between 21 Z and 02 Z.

  • Traditional: 2156 Z, 0001 Z, 0001 Z, 0021 Z
  • SZA: 0111 Z, 0111 Z, 0111 Z, 0111 Z

Here’s the loops so you can play along at home! (Sorry these are really big GIFs, the blog didn’t like the when I converted them to MP4 format)

Traditional Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB

SZZ Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB

1 PM

Forecasters in the PBZ office were thrown into a situation where convection was already developing in the western side of their CWA, and they began issuing warnings, investigating OCTANE, and sending DSS messages to their mock-events.

In the PIH office storms were slow to get going, so we looked at some imagery from the FCI and the synthetic GXI imagery from the HRRR. One target we casually watched throughout the day was a dry line in the TX panhandle, and we compared them to moisture boundaries in Europe and north Africa.

3 PM

PIH was issuing warnings by this time, and frequently relied on radar imagery and knowledge of the environment when making warning decisions. When looking at the OCTANE CTC product and other satellite imagery, the presentation of most storms were not impressive.
In the PBZ office, the forecasters noted that the OCTANE CTC product was limited in its application due to dense cirrus and anvil debris obscuring cooling signals in the ABI infrared bands. In the OCTANE Speed Sandwich however, the forecasters found the speed values and textures from visible imagery easier to view new and intensifying updrafts. This resulted in some discussion about how to ‘train’ for this.

By the end of the day, a number of severe wind reports appeared across the PIH CWA from their mesonet, while in PBZ a single hail report was featured. More reports may come in tonight or tomorrow?

-Kevin

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DSS: Max Road Fire

Posted in DSS, Lightning Stoplight, LightningCast, SPG2026, SZA Imagery on by Kevin Thiel.

During Day 2 of the Hazardous Weather Testbed, we provided mock-DSS to the Max Road Fire located in South FL along the Broward and Miami-Dade county line. Since this was a DSS event, we evaluated the two most important products related to lightning onset and cessation, LightningCast V1 vs V2 and the Stoplight product, at the fire location making sure firefighters had ample lead to time to seek shelter before lightning struck the area. We also requested an on-demand dashboard display of LightningCast V1 and V2 at the exact fire location to help monitor probability trends of lightning activity.

Figure 1 (above): shows an animation of LightningCast V1 (images on the left) vs Lightning V2 (images of the right). Notice the higher probabilities indicated by V2 on the right of up to 70% vs  50% on the left. It turned out that LC V2 provided a much longer lead time of lightning onset just outside the range ring over the fire location.

Figure 2 (above): shows the Spotlight V2 product (GLM FED + ENTLN combined) confirming lightning activity at 1921Z outside of the 8-mile radius from the fire location.

Figure 3 (above): shows a time series plot showing the probability trends of lightning at the exact location of the fire and also the maximum probability of lightning within the 8-mile radius of the fire location. Lightning was detected by the GLM instrument around 2041Z (image below) when the LightningCast probability trends showed a rapid upward trend in probabilities (image above)

Lastly, the Solar Zenith Angle imagery below provided a clearer view of the texture of the clouds right on the coast just north of Miami roughly an hour before sunset when compared to the traditional imagery on the right.

Figure 1: Solar Zenith Angle imagery at 606 PM EDT, almost two hours before sunset. Sunset at Miami (MIA) was at 7: 58 PM as shown on the Climate Daily Report (CLI) from NWS MFL.

Hurricane Specialist

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SPG Blog Post Day 2 – Daytona RFD

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026 on by Kevin Thiel.

Deep convection was prevalent during the afternoon of Tuesday May 12th, 2026. There were several interesting artifacts in the satellite imagery that were noted this day. There were also several different storm types observed such as single cell “pop up” storms, a linear area of storms as well as a few supercells which eventually transitioned into clusters of slow moving storms. Something I thought was particularly unique was the Rear-Flank Downdraft (RFD) on a supercell moving north to south near Daytona Beach while there was a clear west to east steering flow.

This storm initially developed north of the area near Clay County. As it moved off the coast, it strengthened quickly then had an anomalous southerly storm motion as everything else was generally moving east. As the storm pulsed up and down in strength, there were periods where the OCTANE Speed imagery caught the RFD pop out with the green coloring west of the main updraft. You can see that below on Figure 1.

While this is not something out of the ordinary, it was most visible on this satellite product because upper level cirrus blocked this process on other satellite imagery.

Figure 1: Rear-Flank Downdraft (RFD) captured on the Octane Speed imagery as a storm with anomalous south motion moves through the easterly flow.

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Viewing Low-Level Features With MesoAnywhere

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026 on by Kevin Thiel.

There wasn’t much convection today over the MFL CWA, so I spent a lot of time looking at MesoAnywhere to see how it performs compared to the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB from both CONUS scale and meso sector 1.

Some sort of boundary was evident on radar extending southwest from an area of showers west of the Miami radar.

 

Figure 1- Radar image from KAMX radar showing a boundary extending away from an area of showers.

I wanted to see if this boundary was noticeable on satellite, so I pulled up all of the available Day Cloud Phase RGB scales that we had, including from MesoAnywhere.

The boundary is noticeable, but what stood out to me more was the motion of the low-level clouds in the MesoAnywhere product compared to the others. It seems that the motion of the high cirrus clouds was affecting how the motion of the low cumulus was being depicted. Instead of moving to the north like in the other 3 panels, it shows a general west to east motion.

While this doesn’t matter so much in this case since we did have a meso sector available, this becomes a problem if we don’t. The CONUS imagery offers a much better picture of how the clouds are actually moving, but we lose out on the 1 minute imagery.

ei2018

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SPG Blog Post Day 2

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI, SZA Imagery on by Kevin Thiel.

Today, forecasters were located over the MLB and TBW CWAs for a marginal risk over the FL peninsula. Stationary frontal boundary right over the peninsula, with some sea breeze boundaries right along the coastline. Today, I was simulating a forecaster at the MLB office.

Figure 1: SZA Comparison ECONUS Product

  • Around 18Z, I noticed the SZA product had better resolution for analyzing cloud top structure, and picking out some finer details.
    • The SZA and RGB product became more similar later in the afternoon, which is expected. Resolution began to improve on SZA compared to RGB closer to sunset.
Figure 2: OCTANE CTC
  • The CTC product was great for identifying rapidly developing storms during this event. There was one impressive cell that developed by Kissimmee, and the CTC product highlighted these cloud tops very well.
    • From a forecaster perspective, it helped me to pinpoint an area that needed further analysis, and my team and I decided quickly afterwards that a warning needed to be issued for this storm.
    • The speed product was also helpful for visualizing storm motion. Rescaling the product back out to the CONUS scale helped put into perspective where faster moving storms were located.
  • Additionally for the OCTANE suite, I paired the MesoAnywhere, LightningCast spotlight, and MRMS data in a perspective. In this perspective, I had the “red” 0-10 minute values flashing, and semi-transparent, so you could see the data below the stoplight.
    • Stoplight was very helpful in the DSS realm. I used it for a quick guide to respond to partners about event precautions.
Figure 3: WV/WVT/IRob/VISob Compare 4 panel
  • Something very interesting that was noticed on the WVT imagery, was sea breeze moisture moving in on the FL east coast. I toggled with the colormap a little bit, making the minimum be 0.2, and the maximum be 1. This makes it a little easier to watch the darker colors, representing the moisture, move in from the ocean. Very interesting feature to capture on the simulated satellite imagery!
    • The 5.15 imagery did not seem to capture this as well, which makes sense as the sea breeze was probably a very shallow feature.
Kelvin-Helm
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Overview: Week 2, Day 2

Posted in Daily Summaries, OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI, SZA Imagery on by Kevin Thiel.

10 AM

Tuesday began with a group discussion and first impressions for the five experimental products. Topics included how forecasters applied LightningCast and the Lightning Stoplight, OCTANE Cloud-Top Cooling for monitoring updraft strength, and the value of SZA imagery near sunrise to observe low clouds and fog. I showed an example of the SZA Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB on CIRA-SLIDER, with clouds and storms across Florida around sunrise. I asked the forecasters to identify what time the imagery became ‘usable’ for them, and compared it against the traditional imagery of the same scene. Here were the results:

  • Traditional imagery: 1131 Z, 1141 Z, 1151 Z, 1206 Z
  • SZA imagery: 1051 Z (x3), 1101 Z

I’m hoping to run a similar experiment with SZA imagery near sunset tomorrow. Here’s the imagery I showed today. When do you think each imagery becomes ‘usable’?

Traditional Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB

SZA Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB

We jumped into our forecast discussion, which asked the question ‘Can we avoid going back to Florida again?’ Unfortunately that answer was NO, so we localized to NWS Melbourne, FL and NWS Miami, FL.

 

 

1 PM

Shortly after ops started SPC issued an MD for the Florida peninsula.

Forecasters in the MFL office talked about providing DSS with LightningCast and Lightning Stoplight, and noticed in the OCTANE MesoAnywhere product how cirrus motions aloft cloud interfere with low cloud motions. MesoAnywhere is on the left, ABI MESO imagery is on the right.

Forecasters in the MLB office issued a handful of warnings, and we had a discussion about the OCTANE-CONUS Cloud-Top Cooling product. While the OCTANE MESO products showed more information, forecasters still found the OCTANE-CONUS products useful if a MESO wasn’t availalble in this case.

Late in the day we viewed the frontal boundary in KS where storms might initiate this evening through the Synthetic GXI products, namely the 5.15 µm and WVT products. We compared them with the ABI split window moisture field (10.3-12.2 bands) and the ALPW from JPSS. In talking with another developer, we got the idea to create a ‘sandwich’ product that meshes the WVT and ABI Split Window products.

-Kevin

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SPG Blog Post Florida Convection 05-11-2026

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI on by Kevin Thiel.

Deep convection was hard to come by in Florida on May 11th, 2026 but a weakening storm did move over a land breeze boundary along the coast during the late afternoon and into the evening. The land breeze was visible on the GeoXO viewer and can be seen as a buildup of moisture along the coast which then dissipates around 2200z. Figure 1 shows this buildup of moisture very well.

Figure 1: Land breeze moisture build up along the East Coast of Florida.

As a weakening thunderstorm traversed over the boundary, it was reinvigorated and strengthened rapidly. This can be seen below on Figure 2. A thunderstorm moved over the boundary, seemingly absorbed the moisture at the boundary and developed deep convection over the ocean.

Figure 2: A thunderstorm moved over a land breeze boundary and restrengthened.

Batman

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Florida Convection – May 11 2026

Posted in SPG2026, Synthetic GXI on by Kevin Thiel.

Today we examined several experimental satellite products, LightningCast V2, Synthetic GXI, and Solar Zenith Angle – Adjusted (SZA) Imagery, OCTANE, and Lightning Stoplight over north central Florida. It was a relatively quiet convective day across the CONUS, especially for mid May with the only area of significant convection over north central Florida.

While I was already very familiar with the LightningCast V2, the Stoplight and the SZA imagery, the product that sparked the most interest to me or was most excited about its future capabilities  was the synthetic GXI imagery, which uses the 0.91 µm and the Water Vapor Transmittance (WVT) or the ratio of the 0.91 µm/0.86 µm channels.  Once these two new channels become available on the Next Generation of GOES satellites, GeoXO, I believe these two new products will become extremely useful in determining moisture gradients or moisture pooling and it would be of greater utility than the current Split Window Difference (SWD) product available from the current GOES Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). In particular, the WVT image below (top right panel) clearly showed a moisture gradient (darker colors representing higher TPW vs brighter color colors representing lower TPW) associated with a cold front sinking into the Gulf Coast states.

Figure 1 (above): Four Panel Display of GeoXO imagery showing the 5.5 µm and the WVT products at the top left and right respectively, and the “Clean” Window IR and VIS channels at the bottom left and right respectively.

Figure 2. WPC Surface Analysis valid 18 UTC Mon May 11 2026 showing cold front extending from the Carolinas southwestward to the Gulf Coast states to along the U.S.- Mexico border.

Hurricane Specialist

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SPG Blog Post Day 1

Posted in LightningCast, OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026 on by Kevin Thiel.

Today, the group learned about the suite of satellite products that we will be testing. Below I will include some notes on two of the products we learned about during the operations portion of the day.

Figure 1: LightningCast-ECONUS-compare product
  • During this exercise, we were placed into two different CWAs: MLB and JAX. I was in the MLB CWA, monitoring developing convection over the FL peninsula, as a frontal boundary moves through to the north. There was a marginal risk, per SPC guidance.
  • Above is the LightningCast ECONUS comparison product. The top two panels used GOES-19 satellite imagery, while the bottom two panels used MRMS data. The left panels are V1 of LightningCast, and the right panels are V2.
    • I noticed that V2 improved on noise reduction, with low percent chances of lightning being more confined to developing storms. V1 seemed to have some low percentages over clouds that looked like low level cumulus, but V2 fixed that.
  • I really liked how this product highlights areas of active storms, and where the best chances of thunder are next. I find the extent of the LightningCast product to help for DSS purposes, as I have an idea on what areas ahead of the storm should prepare to see lightning.
    • The color scale, following SPC categories, works nicely and is easy to interpret, from a forecaster point of view.
Figure 2: Octane CTC
  • Figure 2 shows the OCTANE Cloud Top Cooling product.
  • This suite of products became helpful as I began to understand their use.
    • The CTC product seems to be very informative on convection development, and differentiating between the various thunderstorm phases. The color scale changes from green, yellow, to red to indicate cloud tops beginning to cool, and are colored at the rate at which they cool every 5 minutes. This way, the user can see where cloud tops are rapidly cooling, and thus where convection is developing/strengthening.
  • The colormap is relatively easy to understand, from my perspective.
  • Playing around with the color scale may help to really hone in on developing storms, as from looking around the CONUS, there is a lot of blues and greens. If someone wanted to narrow the scale a little, to reduce the amount of data to sift through, that could help make things a little easier to navigate. I personally don’t mind it, because I think it’s a good way to see general cloud coverage and cloud types.

Kelvin-Helm

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