Very dry antecedent conditions and the passage of a cold front with strong post-frontal winds resulted in the development of a haboob and blowing dust across the southern plains during the evening of 11-12 Oct 2020. Images and videos from across the region captured the haboob as it progressed south and east across CO into KS/OK/TX during the evening.
One-minute GOES-East imagery captured the early evolution of the haboob along the cold front as it progressed south across southeast Colorado during the final hours of sunlight (Fig 1 and 2). The examples provide a comparison between a feature-relative and fixed region animations.
Given the presence of patchy cloud cover atop the blowing dust, RGB imagery could be used to more easily differentiate/confirm areas of blowing dust (Fig 3 and 4).
Ten-min GOES-East imagery covering a broader region and longer period over the southern plains captured the full evolution of the cold front/haboob and region of blowing dust. IR window imagery with a custom grayscale colortable and range of -55C to 45C clearly highlights the temperature contrast ahead and behind the cold front (Fig 5).
Dust-Fire RGB imagery highlights areas of blowing dust, wildfire hot spots, and intense smoke plumes in the strong southwest flow ahead of the front, in addition to the cold front itself (Fig 6).
The following morning, a bore was diagnosed in visible imagery following passage of the cold front across southeast Texas (Fig 7).
Bill Line, NESDIS/CIRA
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