RAMMB Satellite Case Studies

The 31 May 1996 Tornadic Outbreak Over Colorado and Kansas

Published: February 25th, 2000

Interesting weather in the region on the 31st of May includes: 1) a line of tornadic thunderstorms that formed along a dissipating warm front in northern Kansas; 2) tornadoes also in eastern Colorado near the point where a dryline, a cold front and the warm front intersected; and 3) large hail reported in Kansas, Colorado and Texas. For more details about what the imagery can tell us about this meteorological event, please visit one, or both, of our highlight summary pages depending upon whether your interest is basic or advanced, technically.

This GOES-8 dataset from 31 May 1996 contains 265 files, consisting of one file for each of the 5 imaging channels, at full resolution, for each of 53 separate scanning periods. The observations occurred between 21:15:15 and 22:59:18 UTC. As can be seen from the inventory, the elapsed time between scanning sequences varies, but during the periods 22:04:12 - 22:11:49 and 22:35:12 - 22:42:49, 30-second interval sequences are available. The 22:04:12 VIS and the 22:35:12 VIS images can be seen above, left and right. They represent the first of the 15 images available in each of these two 30-second sequences.

The digital, McIDAS format data are available by FTP, using either "129.82.108.154" or "canopus.cira.colostate.edu". Log in with "anonymous" and then provide your e-mail address as the password; the data are in the 96152_1min/earlydev directory.