If you’d rather not travel to Michigan to find out, satellites can help. The storm that passed over the Midwest and is bringing a cold snap to the sacred environs of Frogmore tonight left a very distinct snow line across the Central US:
But how do you tell the difference between snow and low clouds? The GOES satellite looks at the earth using 16 different wavelengths of light, including temperature and water vapor bands. We can combine them in different ways to emphasize various features. One of these is the “Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB” product, which combines reflectance and temperature. In it we can more easily distinguish between snow covered ground and low clouds …
this is great if you’d rather not go outside. I’ve almost got the new web site ready to go, will let subscribers know when it’s live, and this product is on it, updated every 15 minutes or so.
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Thanks for all your very detailed work. Really enyoy your blog!