A rough day in the NAS through the eyes of GOES-14 SRSOR imagery

Yesterday was a rough day in the National Airspace System, particularly for the Northeast U.S. A fairly strong front was pushing east towards the Atlantic Coast, bringing with it several lines of thunderstorms oriented north-south. Unfortunately, that orientation is perhaps the most impact-causing to the New England airports. Why? See the graphic below for the answer...

Flight routes surrounding the NY and D.C. area terminals in dashed white, with FIR and ARTCC bounds in dotted purple.

Note the significant amount of east-west jet routes (dashed white lines), particularly in New York's airspace (green box). When lines of north-south oriented convection move into this area, most of those flight routes are cutoff.

Yesterday was one of those times, and while well forecasted, still ended in many delays and some diverts. Below is a loop of 1-minute imagery and ASDI flight tracks in the Northeast. Watch traffic into and out of the major New York terminals closely. Within the span of this hour long loop the majority of east-west jet routes had to be shut down.

20150820 1832 - 2004 UTC 1-minute SRSOR visible imagery and 10-minute ASDI flight tracks

Much of the traffic was being rerouted either south along the coast or north through Canada. However, as this convection progressed beyond the time of this loop, those routes became temporarily blocked as well. In this case the 1-minute imagery was a good monitoring tool. Participants at the CAWS desks kept it up on one of their screens to help confirm that their issued CAWS were accurate, and if they weren't, to determine whether the growth or decay noted in the 1-minute (along with radar features, etc.) would necessitate an amendment.