…Note: scroll down to the bottom of this post for 22 August and 23 August updates… On August 19, 2013, the Rim Fire complex in Groveland, CA spawned a pyrocumulonimbus cloud as it burned through the Stanislaus National Forest. The GOES-14 satellite was also placed into Super Rapid Scan Operations for GOES-R (SRSO-R) for the day, […]
Mike Fromm (NRL) coined the term “pyrobubbles”, and pointed out 3 examples that occured on 16 August 2013. We shall examine each of thse 3 cases using GOES-15 (GOES-West) imagery. The first pyrobubble originaled from a fire near the Idaho/Montana border; GOES-15 0.63 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation) showed the […]
Sparked on Saturday, August 11, the Tooele County wildfire continued to burn through Wednesday, August 14, belching a large amount of smoke into the atmosphere. GOES-15 visible imagery (above, left panel; click image to play) depicts a fair amount of smoke being ejected from the fire and a small pyrocumulonimbus cloud forming rapidly near the end of the […]
The GOES-14 satellite was placed into Super Rapid Scan Operations for GOES-R (SRSO-R) mode on 13 August 2013, providing imagery at 1-minute intervals. The development of a well-defined pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud produced by a large fire burning to the east of Boise in southern Idaho can be seen in a comparison of GOES-14 0.63 µm […]
A brief pyrocb event was seen on GOES-15 imagery on August 12, 2013. A two-panel comparison of GOES-15 visible and shortwave IR images (above; click image to play animation) showed numerous hot spots (red enhancement on shortwave IR) at latitude/longitude of 43.8 degrees North and 114.5 degrees West. On the visible images, there was also […]
A cluster of 4 major fire complexes (Pony, Elk, McCan, and Beaver Creek) east of Boise in southern Idaho began to exhibit extreme fire behavior on during the afternoon and evening hours on 10 August 2013. A comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West) and GOES-13 (GOES-East) 1-km resolution 0.63 µm visible channel and 4-km resolution 3.9 µm […]
