On Tuesday, June 20, Tropical Storm Cindy became the third named tropical storm of the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season. Cindy would threaten the TX/LA/MS Gulf coast Wednesday into Thursday, with heavy/flooding rainfall the primary threat. 1-minute satellite imagery from GOES-16 was available over the tropical system as it approached the coast. A key benefit of the high-temporal imagery for tropical monitoring has been easier identification of a center of circulation. Another key benefit is improved monitoring of convective evolution associated with the systems.
Below is a 1-min “sandwich product” animation from Cindy during the morning on Wednesday. The sandwich product is simply the 0.5 km visible imagery as an underlay, with semi-transparent 2 km IR imagery an overlay over cold (often convective) clouds. This image combination has been discussed on this blog in previous posts for use in convective situations. In this case, one can easily identify the center of circulation in the high resolution vis, while at the same time motioning cloud top temperature evolution in the IR.
Figure 1: 21 June 2017 GOES-16 VIS/IR combo over TS Cindy. Full resolution: https://satelliteliaisonblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/20170621_cindy4.gif
– Bill Line, NWS
“The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing testing. Users bear all responsibility for inspecting the data prior to use and for the manner in which the data are utilized.”
Satellite Liaison Blog 
