NOAA, NWS shows features of new weather satellite

Meteorologist shown features, how to best utilize GOES East data

New weather satellite, GOES East shows a smoke plume from a fire and clouds developing

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The NOAA and National Weather Service office in Jacksonville invited area meteorologists to its office Tuesday for training on features of the new weather satellite, GOES East.

The two-hour session covered the 16 unique bands of data the new satellite offers, how to access the data and optimal utilization of the data.

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Science and operations officer Peter Wolf led the session, showing some satellite features never seen before, one was a large wildfire actually moving across a part of the Texas panhandle. Wolf also provided resources to access real time and archived satellite data online, and described what each of the available bands and derived products is best used for.

NWS Meteorologist Cindy Elsenheimer reviewed the ProbSevere and ProbTor products, which are models run at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies that utilize satellite, radar, and other data to provide useful probabilistic t-storm threat information that often shows a ramp-up of probabilities five to 10 minutes prior to warning issuances.

She showed a few case examples to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the products. One case example was the local hail event from March 20. The meteorologists discussed how local storms that have turned left have produced hail, while the right-turning storms were more likely to produce a tornado.

Wolf and Elsenheiner also shared many manners in which to access real-time and archived data online.

One aspect that caught the eye of The Weather Authority was the Day Cloud Phase product, which allows you to tell the difference between clouds made of water and clouds made of ice. Watching storms develop on this product would give meteorologists an idea of when storms may breach the strength necessary to produce lightning.