A line of severe storms progressed southeast across the upper midwest during the early evening hours on 5 August 2019. One-minute visible imagery from GOES-East provided an excellent view of storm top features and trends, including numerous overshooting tops and above anvil cirrus plumes, indicating active and exceptionally strong updrafts. Overlaying a semi-transparent 1-min GLM Flash Extent Density, we have even more information about individual updraft trends, augmenting the visible imagery whose details are still noticeable. Trends in the GLM lightning field tell us which updrafts are increasing in intensity, and which are decreasing, sometimes slightly prior to those trends becoming apparent in satellite and radar imagery. The GLM gridded lightning fields are on the same grid as the ABI data, so share the same degree of parallax. Also noted are periodic long flashes extending well away from the main updraft regions, indicating the potential for distant cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.

Bill Line, NWS