GOES Dervied Winds and You...

Where to start with the GOES Derived Motion Winds. I can see utility in having satellite derived winds, but there are some issues that need to be sorted out first before they can really be useful to an operational forecaster. First, the plotting convention, there is no need to plot three separate colors for Winds <30kts, 30<= Winds < 50 kts, winds > 50 kts. The barb tells you what the speed is, we don't need to color code these three levels. Additionally, when you load up all the mandatory levels, you end up with too many categories of winds. Considering the cloud heights play into where the winds are generated/plotted by GOES-16, a forecaster will need to plot all the mandatory levels, and with three categories for each, that is 27 different wind barb sets, which is unnecessary. Timing is an issue, as well, Wind data is sporadic, not with every GOES scan. For the gif example below, this is conus scale for both the mid-level water vapor and the winds. Notice the variation of wind data to each 6.95um (mid-level water vapor scan).

Dale Doback