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November 4, 2024

NOAA awards $7.6 million for flooding, extreme precipitation preparedness

Hurricane Helene caused record flooding and damage on September 28, 2024, in Asheville, NC.


On October 29, 2024, the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced $7.6 million in funding for cooperative institutes to transform satellite observations into information communities can use to prepare for and recover from floods and heavy precipitation.

The awards fund work to create street-level maps of potential flooding and inundation, improve models of how water cycles through the nation’s rivers and streams, and develop a new dataset of hourly-precipitation information to help businesses and communities better understand the effects of extreme rainfall.

• Read the full NOAA article.

image: NOAA award $7.6 million for flooding extreme precipitation preparedness

September 12, 2024

GOES Imagery Tracks Francine

STAR GOES site is a key storm monitoring resource


On September 8, the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) identified a large low pressure disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico. Now, as named storm Francine, the hurricane dumped heavy rainfall and produced dangerous winds on Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.

The STAR GOES imagery site produces images that follow the storm position data from the NHC. GOES storm pages are then referenced by both the NHC and by NOAA's Hurricane Francine pages. The GOES Imagery site does this for every NHC-tracked tropical storm in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific regions.

• NHC Francine forecast & details

• GOES Imagery for Francine

image: Hurricane Francine, 10 September 2024

April 16, 2024

NOAA Confirms 4th global coral bleaching event


The world is currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event, the fourth global event on record and the second in the last 10 years.

"From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin," said Derek Manzello, Ph.D., NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator.

• See NOAA's complete story

photo: coral bleaching in July 2022, NOAA education program
hover over animation to pause

STAR in the News

photo: Hurricane Francine, September 10, 2024

Tracking Francine’s Latest Path

September 12, 2024 - Bloomberg News reports: Francine is the third named storm to hit the mainland US this year. The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season got off to a quick start, but had stalled in recent weeks before Francine. It has now produced six storms, four of which became hurricanes.

STAR's GOES-East geocolor image of the storm is featured.

Read more in the Bloomberg News story.




photo: Marshall Colorado Wildfire, December 2021

AI and satellite imaging doing early wildfire detection in Colorado

July 30, 2024 - This week the Denver Post reports on a new artificial intelligence program — the Next Generation Fire System — which will help identify wildfires as small as an acre by scanning images taken by weather satellites orbiting about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. NOAA officials say it can process the deluge of data from the satellites — which capture images as frequently as every 30 seconds — and detect heat from fires smaller than a football field. The program then flags potential new fires to a dashboard so humans can check the images and verify the existence of a fire.

While humans are great at detecting a new fire from satellite images, they can’t process the firehose of data as quickly and easily as the AI program, said STAR's Mike Pavolonis, NOAA Satellites’ Wildland Fire Program manager.

Read more in the Denver Post story.



Read more STAR in the News