Category Archives: Synthetic NSSL WRF-ARW Imagery

1-minute imagery of warm conveyor belt on 1-2 February 2016 winter storm

  A winter storm that passed through Colorado on 1-2 February 2016 resulted in significant snowfall over northern / northeast Colorado: One of the key aspects of this extra-tropical cyclone was the development of a warm conveyor belt (Harrold 1973). … Continue reading

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Synthetic imagery from the 4-km NSSL WRF-ARW model for the 22 April 2015 severe weather event

This blog entry consists of a youtube video: http://youtu.be/2-3xVFXdw-o  

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Leeside cold front of 10 November 2014: Blowing dust and deep-tropospheric gravity waves

A strong cold front pushed southward across the Plains during the day on November 10, 2014.  The temperature gradient across the front was quite dramatic, as seen by the surface observations at 23:00 UTC: Visible imagery from GOES-East during the … Continue reading

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Convective Initiation Application via the Split Window Difference product

One of the exciting new products that will be available on GOES-R is the split window difference (SWD) which is simply the difference between the 10.35 micron and 12.3 micrometer channels.  This channel difference has been shown to provide information … Continue reading

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Orographic Cirrus of 18 December 2013

Orographic cirrus (i.e., mountain wave) clouds can have a significant influence on temperature forecasts, particularly during the cold season when a reduction in insolation can drastically affect temperatures during the daytime. On December 18, 2013 the CIRA synthetic 4-km NSSL-WRF … Continue reading

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Synthetic imagery for the 3 Dec 2013 fog/low cloud case

The previous blog entry discussed CIRA satellite imagery that can be useful in highlighting fog and low clouds.  These images utilize existing satellite imagery to create images that try to replicate those that will be available in the GOES-R era. … Continue reading

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October 17, 2012 fog over Wisconsin

Let’s examine the synthetic low cloud / fog product from the 4-km NSSL WRF-ARW model.  This is from the 0000 UTC 17 October run valid between 0900-1600 UTC 17 October: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/17oct12_syn_fog&image_width=1020&image_height=900 Low cloud / fog is depicted as blue in … Continue reading

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Synthetic low cloud / fog imagery to forecast stratus

The synthetic low cloud / fog product from the NSSL WRF-ARW model has a variety of forecasting applications.  One of those is forecasting the development of stratus clouds. The NWS forecast office in Austin / San Antonio made use of … Continue reading

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Synthetic Satellite Imagery evaluated at SPC

As part of NOAA’s Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiment at the Storm Prediction Center, CIRA is delivering 3 synthetic imagery products to be evaluated in the Experimental Warning Portion of the experiment in their AWIPS-II system: 6.95 micrometers, 10.35 micrometers, … Continue reading

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Synthetic IR imagery showing fog/low clouds from BOU WFO on 8 November 2011

This example from the Boulder WFO shows the use of synthetic IR imagery generated from the 4-km horizontal grid resolution NSSL WRF model for predicting an area of fog and low clouds near the Denver International Airport (DIA) on the … Continue reading

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