Shea Gibson - Meteorologist

Rut-ro! Not good. Hope they can get GOES 19 fixed soon!

🚨 A WEATHER SATELLITE FAILURE DURING HURRICANE SEASON?

One of NOAA’s newest weather satellites, GOES-19, has entered “safehold” after engineers detected an onboard problem.

Why does this matter?

GOES-19 is one of the primary eyes we use to monitor tropical waves, Saharan dust, and developing storms over the Atlantic. If the outage lasts, it could temporarily reduce some of the satellite imagery we rely on during hurricane season.

The good news: NOAA planned for this. A backup satellite, GOES-16, is already in orbit and can take over if needed, although moving it into position and restoring full operations could take 2–3 weeks.

We won’t lose our ability to track storms. Europe’s Meteosat satellite, GOES-West, polar-orbiting satellites, and hurricane reconnaissance all help fill in the picture.

This isn’t cause for alarm, but it is an important development that meteorologists across the country will be watching closely. I’ll keep you posted as NOAA releases updates. 🛰️🌀

🤣😂

7/13/26 Monday 8pm:
Might have another chance for the jellyfish effect tomorrow morning, but I gotta say 5:10am is a bit early seeing as sunrise is 6:22am. I still plan on getting up to see if it happens. Look to the SE and East just a couple of minutes after liftoff.