HRRR: Top Soil and Surface Temperature

I'm looking at the surface temperature of the Great Salt Look and wondered if the top soil temperature or the surface temperature is what I should be looking at. Turns out, the top soil level and the lowest temperature level (surface temperature) are identical over water

Shown, difference between Soil Temperature (top soil level) and Surface Temperature:

As you can see, there is no difference between the surface temperature and top soil level temperature over the Great Salt Lake (thus, the white color over the lake area).

The same can not be said over mountainous areas, where there are the largest differences.

GOES-R Satellite Launched

On 19 Noveber 2016, the GOES-R satellite was successfully launched. This new NOAA satellite is set to make a big impact on weather forecasting over the next decade.

Watch the Launch below

More info can be found here

That was a cold storm

That last blue bar. Yeah, that was yesterday's temperature range. It was cold.

Storm's a comin'

The first half of this November has been comically warm. The temperatures at Salt Lake get warmer and warmer.

But our first winter storm is at our doorstep. Temperatures will begin to drop this evening and we'll see some snow in the mountains and the valley floor. Below shows the NAM forecast for 5:00 PM this evening. Going to work tomorrow will be considerably colder than it was this morning. The thermometer in my car said is was 57 F on my way to the train. Tomorrow morning will be closer to freezing.

Mark your calendar!! GOES-R Launches this Saturday

The GOES-R satellite is scheduled to launch 19 November 2016 at 3:40 Mountain Time. This satellite is an advancement in modern weather observation systems and will aid in weather forecasting and monitoring.

Operational RAP/HRRR update for wind gusts

As a note to myself:

AUTHOR:   Stan Benjamin
  DATE:     3-November-16 1459Z

A change was made in the wind gust diagnostic calculation for the operational
RAP and HRRR yesterday (2 Nov 2016) starting with the 14z run. This change
reverted to use of a theta-v profile PBL depth for the wind gust diagnostic
instead of using an alternative hybrid PBL-depth. Use of the hybrid PBL was
resulting in too-strong wind gust fields at nighttime. More information is
available in http://ruc.noaa.gov/rr/RAP_var_diagnosis.html#gust