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Spring Experiments & Beyond









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Running with SZAs: Lessons to Carry Forward From the Spring 2026 SPG

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, SZA Imageryon June 4, 2026by Kevin Thiel.


Today marks the final testing day of the 2026 Satellite Proving Ground. It has been an illuminating week for myself – a pun we’ll get back to in a second. But first, some serious business. The Satellite HWT has proven to be a beneficial experience for a multitude of reasons. Foremost of those is the opportunity to test and help shape development on a whole new generation of satellite-based forecaster tools. But one shouldn’t discount the benefit that comes from the process, the collaboration, and the chance to work with scientists one might not get to meet otherwise. For me at least, this collaboration has been the most satisfying part of the week. A sincere thanks to the organizers, developers, and other forecasters who have made this week such a treat.

Ok, now back to the pun. This has been an illuminating week testing out five different satellite-based tools. The one tool that I haven’t shared imagery from this week is the SZA azimuth-corrected imagery. There’s a simple reason for that: it is designed to increase the visibility of day-cloud satellite products in low light scenarios around daybreak and dusk. The actual experimental time for this project is from early-to-late afternoon across the CONUS. Not exactly an ideal time.

So with that in mind, one of the first things I did today was to check in on SZA imagery from off the coast this morning. This side-by-side comparison of Day Cloud Phase between SZA and non-corrected imagery shows how powerful of a tool this could be.



Figure 1: SZA-corrected Day Cloud Phase (left) and non-corrected imagery (right) over the Atlantic Ocean early this morning

It’s one thing for Day Cloud Phase to gain more definition in the updraft/anvil pinks right at daybreak. That is valuable, but only so much. We already kind of know what’s happening at that level. The forecaster can benefit so much more from increased brightness right by the surface, where dynamic processes and even the texture of the clouds can help us discern so much.

I spent most of today as the “warning operator” at the Topeka simulated WFO. This meant I wasn’t experimenting with satellite products as much as I was testing how they could be used in warning operations to increase confidence in severe impacts from a thunderstorm. Invariably, my real-life operations rely on Day Cloud Phase as just one of the best products to detect vertical motion trends within convection. There are multiple forms of Day Cloud Phase that one can use within this experiment. I am particularly intrigued by MesoAnywhere’s ability to level the playing field, so to speak, when Mesoscale sectors aren’t available for the GOES satellites. Unfortunately, I did not proof the gif pulled off of AWIPS to try and demonstrate that point, and it is not time-matched between different products.



Figure 2: A gif that I did not realize was going to be frame-unmatched showing the three different types of Day Cloud phase available without a meso sector

The products that we tested this week all have the potential to enhance operations in the NWS. I look forward to reviewing them with my colleagues in the weeks to come.

Sabrina Carpenter

Tags: None


Cloud Top Cooling Advanced Warning

Posted in OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026on June 4, 2026by Kevin Thiel.


Widespread thunderstorms and several supercells were visible moving east-northeast over Kansas this afternoon. The GOES-19 EMESO-1 Cloud Top Cooling showed several large bursts of cooling as visible in two separate supercells in the image below. The northern one showed a tight circulation and a possible brief tornado roughly 9 minutes after the initial burst of cooling. The southern cooling burst strengthened the outflow burst and produced damaging winds that also showed on radar 9 minutes later. A supercell to the west of the region in the image also showed major cooling about 5 minutes before radar indicated a possible tornado and a warning was put out. Based on these few observations, it seems reasonable that severe thunderstorm warnings could be put out long before radar confirmation based on significant cloud top coolings, at least in mature thunderstorms where conditions are favorable for severe weather. In areas where radar is not accessible, this could also be used to help assist in putting out tornado warnings.



Figure 1: On left: GOES-19 Octane Meso Anywhere CH-13-10.35um and CH-02-0.64um with GOES-19 EMESO-1 Cloud Top Cooling overlaid. On right: Ktwx 0.5 velocity (kts).

It is also worth noting the displacement of the cloud top cooling vs the radar signature due to parallax. Figure 2 shows that this area has a parallax of roughly 19 km to the northwest which would be very important to keep in mind when putting out warnings for any area based on satellite imagery.



Cloudius

Tags: None


Last Impressions

Posted in Lightning Stoplight, LightningCast, OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026, Synthetic GXI, SZA Imageryon June 4, 2026by Kevin Thiel.


 SZA

Love it! Can’t wait for it to be implemented. The amount of detail that can be ascertained both earlier in the morning and later in the evening is unbelievable. Main applications in my area would be for fog detection and snow squalls. While maybe a bit niche, the snow squall phenomenon is always a challenge. It’s a shallow feature that really ramps up in the afternoon and evening hours. If it’s too far out our radar really can’t pick up on it and the day cloud phase is often one of the best tools for tracking.

OCTANE

Continues to impress! The cloud top cooling tool remains a slam dunk for identifying cells that are quickly growing upscale. The example below shows further cooling after a decent anvil had already developed.



Image below is from the same time above 2112Z



8 minutes later the storm looks to be producing hail



Lightning Cast

Another solid product. I didn’t notice too much difference between the two versions but the parallax fix is very welcome. I personally won’t use the dashboards as I like to see the data overlaid with satellite and radar. Just seeing a chart with numbers moving doesn’t work for me. However, if I would recommend adding a sound feature to the dashboard. The only other suggestion I have is using less contours. I prefer the 10, 25, 50, 75 that are already in AWIPS.

Lightning Stoplight

First time ever using this tool but it will definitely become a mainstay in my arsenal for helping with DSS. I really don’t have a lot of feedback to give. The tool is simple and easy to use. I like overlaying radar on top of it in my procedures and I’m neutral to the idea of changing green to blue.

Geoxo products

These were neat to look at over Africa and Europe, but I found myself really struggling to use them stateside. I may need more training to fully understand the benefits of the synthetic satellite data, but I can’t see myself using it. I already have a ton of different CAMs I can look at, so I’m not sure I understand the benefit of looking at the synthetic satellite. I do have high hopes for the WVT tool though. The color table is very difficult for me to tease out what I need from it though. I tried manipulating the ranges a few times and also changed dry to brown and moist to green, but it still seems pretty difficult to pick out features for myself. What I really want is something to help me track boundaries. Jason shared a really neat animation over Africa that highlighted boundaries very neatly, would love to see if that could be implemented somehow. My end goal is I want to see moisture boundaries from lake breezes, decayed thunderstorms, or different moisture fields such as evapotranspiration

IsthataTOR

Tags: None


When A “Bolt From the Blue” Shatters Your Confidence

Posted in Lightning Stoplight, LightningCast, OCTANE Speed Sandwich, SPG2026on June 4, 2026by Kevin Thiel.


Today presented one of those moments where you feel pretty confident in your messaging, but then mother nature throws you for a loop. For the Red, White, and Lavender festival, a line of general thunderstorms was moving over the festival right around start time of our forecast period so this gave me an opportunity to test the Stoplight tool and LightningCast in a messaging scenario for lightning cessation.

What seemed like a pretty straightforward case of DSS messaging to festival goers regarding the line moving east and lightning threat ending turned into a stressful situation for me. At roughly 1935Z, LightningCast showed probabilities were trending downward while the Stoplight tool was also trending toward yellow and green to suggest we would be approaching that “all clear” state. See the LightningCast dashboard graphic below with the main decision timeframe boxed in yellow. So, I confidently messaged my Festival Coordinator an estimated all clear time to be the top of the hour.





Figure 1 . LightningCast Dashboard over Manhattan Regional Airport, near the Red White and Lavender Festival depicting lightning probabilities trending downwards during my DSS decision timeframe.

But then at ~1955Z, the Stoplight tool turned red again WEST of my site (while the Festival itself was under green) as the FED picked up on what I’m guessing were anvil crawlers. I was surprised because the anvil looked pretty thin to me over that area so I honestly didn’t know what to think. Then, ENTLN lightning plot showed a number of cloud flashes within 10mi east of the site and eventually plotted a negative CG barely 6miles to the east of the festival at 2015Z (see Figure 2). Talk about shattering a DSS forecaster’s confidence!  It seemed to be one of those “bolt out of the blue” strokes, too close for comfort! To LightningCast’s credit, probabilities never went below 20%, with V1 even hovering around 40% the entire decision timeframe.  Mother Nature sure taught me yet another lesson in humility that one cannot be too confident no matter what!



Figure 2. The Stoplight Tool plotted with FED, ENTLN and DSS range rings at 2015Z. The black arrow denotes the location of the negative CG about 6mi east of the site.

I’d like to think that in a real scenario, I would have been a little more conservative in estimating a time of all clear. But with this being an experiment, I felt a little more bold in just “going for it”.



Figure 3. A longer loop of the Stoplight Tool, ENTLN and FED products, including the decision timeframe and point of confidence ruined.

And just for fun, because I’m hooked, below is a loop of the CONUS OCTANE CTC, Speed and Direction products for a rapidly intensifying storm over Cloud and Clay Counties.  Although not as seamless as the mesoscale versions of these tools, there is still a lot of utility in diagnosing storm development and strength with CONUS vs traditional satellite imagery. I’m even becoming more and more a fan of the “blues” colorscale for the CTC product (left hand panel) when plotted on the Ch 13 product. The stark contrast between the dark blues/purples against the rainbow of the IR anvil really catch the eye.



Figure 4 . ECONUS Octane CTC product (left), Octane Speed (middle), and Octane Direction (right).

Astrophage

Tags: None


Expanding my Horizons Beyond OCTANE

Posted in Lightning Stoplight, SPG2026, Synthetic GXIon June 4, 2026by Kevin Thiel.


Took a look at the WVT data from meteosat 12 this morning on the coast of the Red Sea and Yemen and western Saudi Arabia. Can see thunderstorms initiating off the higher terrain and very high WVT values along the coastline and low values inland. This was reflected very well by the surface dewpoints on the Synoptic viewer.



Figure 1: Meteosat 12 WVT band over western Saudi Arabia and Yemen





Figure 2: Synoptic viewer data 0800 hours PDT.

Finally got a chance to use stoplight data at Miles City, MT this afternoon. The product is easy to use for the cessation of lightning over an event. I did wish it was parallax corrected though. I was kind of guessing on the images and with the ENTLN lightning data when the last lightning strikes were.
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