PyroCb in South Africa

The Garden Route Fires had been burning since about 24 October 2018 near George along the southern coast of South Africa (media story). On 29 October, EUMETSAT Meteosat-11 High Resolution Visible (0.8 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.92 µm) and Longwave Infrared Window (10.8 µm) images (above) showed an elongated west-to-east oriented thermal anomaly or fire “hot spot” (red pixels) just northeast of George (station identifier FAGG) on Shortwave Infrared imagery during the hours leading up to the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud around 1300 UTC. The pyroCb exhibited the characteristic warm (+10 to +15ºC, darker gray enhancement) shortwave infrared cloud-top signature just off the coast at 1315 UTC, — this is due to enhanced solar reflection off ice crystals that are smaller compared to those of conventional thunderstorm tops.

Zooming out a bit to follow the southeastward drift of the pyroCb cloud (below), the coldest cloud-top 10.8 µm infrared brightness temperature (BT) was -61ºC (darker red enhancement) at 1315 UTC — then the cloud tops remained in the -55 to -59ºC range (orange enhancement) for the next 6 hours or so. Leveraging the large difference between cold 10.8 µm and warm 3.92 µm BTs, NRL calculates a pyroCb index, which classified this feature as an “intense pyroCb” (1315 UTC | animation). The coldest 10.8 µm cloud-top BT of -61ºC roughly corresponds to an altitude of 13.5 km based on 12 UTC rawinsonde data from Port Elizabeth (plot | list).

Imagery from NOAA-19 at 1420 UTC (courtesy of René Servranckx) also revealed the warm (dark gray) Shortwave Infrared pyroCb signature, along with a minimum cloud-top infrared BT of -58.1ºC (below).

A Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) image att 1230 UTC (below) was about a half hour before the formation of the pyroCb, but it did show a signature of smoke drifting southeastward off the coast.

On the following day (30 October), a NOAA-20 VIIRS True Color image (below) showed the classic comma cloud signature of a mid-latitude cyclone south of the coast, with the band of cold-frontal clouds extending northward across Lesotho. Note the thick plume of smoke spreading eastward within the strong post-frontal westerly winds.

A time series of of surface observations from George (below) supported the idea of a cold frontal passage: ahead of the front, temperatures rapidly rose to 104ºF/40ºC (with a dew point of 39ºF/4ºC) on 28 October about 1.5 hours prior to the formation of the pyroCb — then strong westerly winds (gusting to 40 knots/21 mps) with rising pressures and falling temperatures followed on 30 October.

The pyroCb research community believes that this is the first documented case of a pyroCb on the African continent.