So, I've been forecasting for many years, but one of my downfalls/weaknesses is identifying features on satellite pertaining to severe weather. Using this link below which is my favorite satellite site along with the COD site, can any of you help me identify which particular satellite to use, and how to best identify shortwaves and other various features for severe weather? Thank you in advance to anyone who's willing to help out. If you have a better satellite page that you like, please include that if you want!
GOES IMAGE VIEWER: Southern Rockies
Jason, here is a link to a page from NESDIS explaining the function of all the different Bands on the GOES 16 ABI.
GOES-R Band Plan
As for identifying shortwaves, you are correct in that you want to be looking in the mid- high water vapor IR bands. These go from roughly 600mb to 300 mb and give the best overall view of the mid-level jetstream and troughs. The key to finding shortwaves is looking for discontinuities in the background flow and looking for jet streaks. Its very rare for the atmosphere to be in such perfect harmony that a slug of air 1000s of miles long is moving perfectly straight. Finding the ripples, swirls, and kinks (usually easiest along the northwest side of the jet stream) is one way to find shortwaves. Even with relatively straight line southwesterly flow, interactions with the Rockies in the lower atmosphere will result in the development of shortwave troughs downstream. Thus, you can look for an area where the form preferentially. Watching a WV loop a couple of times you can start to pick out swirls and features indicating subtle shortwaves. The other area to look for is near the nose of jet streaks. Again due to complex dynamics, (differential vorticity advection, temperature advection, stretching, ect...) changes in flow speed can result in subtle height falls and thus, shortwaves.
All in all its just practice. Looping is probably the biggest help. Discontinuities will start to pop out the longer you stare at a loop.
Theres a decent example of a shortwave trough tonight across the eastern Dakotas and a very subtle one across New England. Another subtle wave in the subtropical jet across Missouri into the Ohio River valley. Not to mention the very classic signature over western Nova Scotia.
And just a side note about shortwave troughs. There's a common misconception that the lift from these features is responsible for firing up storms. Thats not true. Troughs and synoptic ascent pre-condition the atmosphere for convection by steepening lapse rates and decreasing inhibition. Even the strongest troughs only produce lift on the scale of centimeters/second. The average dryline circulation has vertical velocities well over a meter/second! (aka ~100x as much from a trough). So dont think of these as magic bullets for spring dryline storms, they certainly help, but they arent everything.
