Delineation of suspended solids in river outflow from Hurricane Florence using GOES-16 ABI data

In September, 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane and inundated the eastern United States with significant rainfall. Precipitation from this slow moving storm event caused massive flooding. Outflow from this flooding carried suspended solids including sediments and other particulates as the rainwater worked its way through river and watershed systems toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - 16 (GOES-16) monitors the eastern United States. ABI data from GOES-16 is available every 5 minutes and provides a platform for studying the increased volume of river flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Data from the GOES-16 ABI covering the Atlantic waters off the eastern United States were downloaded after the Hurricane Florence event. Methodologies for atmospheric correction were used to generate water leaving radiance values from the GOES-16 ABI data sets. Using the multiple looks per day, the plumes of suspended solids were delineated and studied.