Storm Alerts

NOAA GOES19 ABI

Tropical Atlantic satellite

The main development region and the approach to the islands.

NOAA GOES-19 GeoColor, tropical Atlantic

GOES GeoColor satellite image of the Tropical Atlantic
GOES19 GeoColor, Tropical Atlantic. True colour by day and infrared at night. Source: NOAA STAR.

Full disk

GOES full disk GeoColor image of the western hemisphere
The whole visible hemisphere from geostationary orbit.

Reading GeoColor

GeoColor is a composite rather than a straight photograph. During daylight it approximates what your eye would see. After dark it switches to infrared, so cloud tops are shaded by temperature and city lights appear underneath. That switch is why the imagery changes character across the terminator, the line between day and night that runs down these images.

For tropical work the useful signal is cloud top temperature. The coldest tops are the tallest thunderstorms, and a ring of very cold tops wrapped around a centre is what intensification looks like from orbit.