Winter Storms (1 of 2)

3.9 um imagery aids in the interpretation of complex cloud patterns. Those images, in combination with other GOES image channels, provide valuable information for satellite monitoring and analysis of the evolution of winter storms. A daytime 3.9 um image loop, from 1515 to 1945 UTC on January 7, 1996, shows the major winter storm which has been referred to in the media as "the blizzard of 96." This storm produced snowfall totals of 12-30 inches over a large region from Kentucky to New England and had a major impact on the millions of people in the region's largest metropolitan areas.

In the 3.9 um reflectivity image loop below (see the Day-time Reflectivity discussion), the darker shades are areas of low, outgoing radiative energy and the brighter shades are the higher, outgoing energy. The darker cloud areas indicate cloud tops composed predominately of ice particles, while the brighter areas show clouds consisting mainly of water droplets. The storm's cloud shield is made up of smaller cloud regimes, each taking on its own unique appearance (or grey shade) in these reflectivity images. (Multi-channel comparison imagery of this storm is presented on the next "page").

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A more in-depth discussion of this storm and its corresponding satellite imagery interpretation follows:

A band of cirrus aligned along the jet axis is streaming to the northeast over the Atlantic, along the NC coastline. A broad, rather uniform, deep stratiform cloud layer is moving northward across PA and NY. A comma shaped cold cloud area is evident over WV and OH, with a "tail" extending into NC. To the east of the "tail" feature, relatively deep stratiform cloud is moving to the northeast across VA and NC. This cloud regime appears brighter in the 3.9 um imagery due to the presence of supercooled cloud water at cloud top. Another cloud area appears to the west of the "tail" feature, which also consists of water cloud, but has somewhat of a different appearance and shows motion directly to the east. Finally, a patchy cloud regime, which consists of cloud-tops with both ice and water, can clearly be seen circulating around the mid-level low pressure center in south central KY. Lake effect cloud bands associated with Lakes Michigan and Huron consist of water clouds and are located in the otherwise clear region to the north and northwest of the storm.
Note that the boundaries between the cloud regimes are fairly sharp in contrast with the smoother transition one would likely observe by overlaying contour analysis fields of geopotential height, temperature, vorticity, etc. It is likely that the changes which occur as a cloud regime boundary moves across a station are quite abrupt and that the cloud information, when used along with representative radiosonde observations, can be used to refine the conventional analysis fields.

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