PyroCu in British Columbia

On 06 May there was a pyroCu in British Columbia  at 56.6 N 120 W. GOES-15 detected the smoke plume and clouds around the fires, as well as the fire hot spots. Starting at 00:00 UTC on 06 May, the animation below shows visible (0.63 μm) on the left and shortwave IR (3.9 μm) on the right (click image to play animation). In the shortwave IR images the darker black to red pixels indicate very hot IR brightness temperatures exhibited by the fire source region.

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GOES-15 0.63 μm visible (left) and 3.9 μm shortwave IR (right) images (click to play animation)

Using GOES-15 10.7 μm IR channel imagery the minimum cloud-top IR brightness temperatures could be found. The animation below, starting at 00:00 UTC on 06 May, shows that the pyroCu reached around -35ºC (dark blue color enhancement) around 02:30 UTC. It is hard to distinguish between the clouds from the pyroCu and other meteorological clouds that are moving into the area. Since the pyroCu did not reach a minimum value of -40ºC it was not considered to be a pyroCb.

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GOES-15 10.7 μm IR images (click to play animation)

In addition, the GOES-14 satellite was operating in Super Rapid Scan Operations for GOES-R (SRSOR) mode, providing images at 1-minute intervals. The animation below (also available as a large 115 Mbyte Animated GIF) showed the flare-up of fire hot spots and the development of smoke plumes beginning at 1915 UTC on 05 May.

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GOES-14 0.63 µm Visible (top) and 3.9 µm Shortwave Infrared (bottom) images [click to play MP4 animation]