A pyrocumulus cloud, one of the new varieties announced by the World Meteorological Organization on 3/22 last year, rose out of the massive Carr Fire July 26th as it jumped the Sacramento river and spread into west Redding, California.
In this video, I show the animation of it’s growth from the GOES-16 geostationary satellite on the blue (#1) band.
Oh my. Where to begin here? First of all, pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) have officially been a “thing” since at least 2010 (here, I’ll do your research for you: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010BAMS3004.1). Second, the GOES-16 satellite provides imagery more frequently than once every 15 minutes — routine scanning over the US is every 5 minutes…and in special cases (such as this one) imagery is provided at 1-minute intervals. Again, I’ll do your research for you: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/29142). One last thing: the best spatial resolution is not provided by the “Blue” band (which is 1.0 km at sub-satellite point) but by the “Red” band (0.5 km). Again, do your research: https://www.goes-r.gov/education/ABI-bands-quick-info.html As always, many thanks for the huge LOL — I need to check back more often to be sprayed by a scientifically-unhealthy dosage of amateur-science humour!