GOES-16 captured this 1-minute infrared imagery of the large and powerful storm system that brought hail and tornadoes to the Southeast on April 5, 2017.

This imagery was produced with the "long wave" infrared band (aka: band 13) of GOES-16's Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) -- one of the new spectral bands that the imagers aboard the current GOES satellites (GOES-13 and -15) do not have. The reference to "1-minute" in its name refers to the frequency with which ABI captured an image of the storms.

As seen here, the imagery produced by this band offers spectacular views of meteorological phenomena, such as the colder cloud tops (shown in green/yellow/red) associated with these storms, in rich detail. Of particular note are what's known as "enhanced-V features" on some of the cloud tops, which are indicative of severe storm formation.

This animation appears courtesy of our partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA).

Note: This is preliminary, non-operational data as GOES-16 undergoes on-orbit testing.

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