March News

Updated March 12, 2025

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Recent Updates

GOES-19 Becoming GOES-East NET April 4

The GOES-19 satellite (launched on June 25, 2024) is expected to become Operational on April 4, 2025 at approximately 1510 UTC, replacing GOES-16 in the GOES-East role at Longitude 75.2W. Until GOES-19 is declared GOES-East, all its data is considered Preliminary, Non-Operational.

Beginning no earlier than (NET) March 21 and ending by April 1, GOES-19 will drift from its test orbit at 89.5W into the designated GOES-East orbit at 75.2W. GOES-19 data will be unavailable during the drift period, until declared Operational. Meanwhile, GOES-16 will drift slightly from 75.2W to 75.5W with no anticipated data loss.

Following a post-drift checkout on April 1-3, GOES-19 will undergo a final operational readiness review on April 3, the expected result of which is the declaration of GOES-19 as Operational and GOES-East. Once GOES-16 has been replaced, it will spend the following 60 days drifting into a storage orbit at 105W. GOES-16 will then remain in non-operational storage mode for the foreseeable future.

More information on the GOES-19 Transition to Operations (T2O) timeline is available via the GOES-R website.

 

AWIPS Software Update Now Available

Updates to the TOWR-S RPM and AWIPS Pre-Processor (APP) are now packaged together as TOWRpro v25. All sites are invited to install the software using this procedure. Thank you to the >97 sites who installed in the first month! More details about what the software package entails are found here. Please visit the #towr-s Slack channel or contact Emily Maddox with questions.

 

GOES Enterprise Rain Rate Product Now on SBN

The Enterprise Rain Rate product from GOES became available via the Satellite Broadcast Network on March 5 (delayed from March 3 for Critical Weather). This has replaced the legacy RR product with no change to the data cadence or volumes. More information is available in Service Change Notice (SCN) 25-13.

 

NWS Satellite Readiness Roadmap Activities

The TOWR-S Team is coordinating with colleagues across NWS and NESDIS to guide the future of weather satellite observations at NOAA. This joint effort is currently in the information gathering and planning stage, focusing on related system-readiness projects (e.g., the transition to AWIPS in the Cloud), user readiness for near-term satellite missions, and a NESDIS/NWS joint data strategy. Updates and publications from Roadmap activities will be highlighted in this monthly bulletin for the foreseeable future.

The first assessment for the Roadmap is regarding NWS readiness for the Metop-Second Generation satellites, developed by European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and to be launched from ESA beginning in 2025. The TOWR-S Team has been meeting with representatives from the JPSS program and NCEP to prepare documentation and procedures. Access to the plan in progress may be requested here.

Activities are also underway for the assessment and implementation of Meteosat-Third Generation (MTG) data to the field. MTG-I1 operates as the first vehicle in the next generation of geostationary satellites from EUMETSAT; crucial to Atlantic observations.

Please contact Fawaz Al-Mtwali with any questions regarding the Roadmap.

ICYMI

SBN Availability of OSCAT Winds Delayed

Delays in the approval of OSCAT Winds have led to postponement of its availability via SBN. OSCAT remains a high priority for TOWR-S, though its operational availability may be postponed until late summer. The latest TOWRpro (see above) provides a migrational data flow path from the STAR server, ingesting and displaying the currently available data. It will also handle the product when OSCAT begins to flow over the SBN. Please contact the TOWR-S Team with any questions.

Looking Ahead

ALPW Coming to SBN NET March 28

The CIRA Advected Layered Precipitable Water (ALPW) product from JPSS satellites has been implemented into NESDIS operations, and is expected to become available to all sites via SBN on or after March 28, replacing what is currently available over regional LDM on PDA Ops. More information is available in SCN 25-03. TOWRpro v25 (see Recent Updates) will handle the new product once dataflow commences.

 

TOWR-S Quarterly Update April 18

Each quarter, the TOWR-S Team and the NWS Office of Observations review recent and upcoming satellite data products, services, and resources supporting forecast operations. The next update is tentatively scheduled for April 18, with the live presentation occurring at 1pm ET on Google Meet. All past presentation slides are available on VLab. Please contact Derek Van Pelt with any questions.