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Port Neches Chemical plant explosion on 27 November 2019
Posted: November 27, 2019
According to media reports, an explosion occurred at the near Texas’ border with Louisiana, on Wednesday at about 1 a.m. (2 a.m. Eastern) on 27 November 2019. Reports state that only three people sustained minor injuries and all workers at the plant having been accounted for.
The first indication of the explosion from satellite came from GOES-16 at ~1:06am CST (0706UTC) in Band 5 (1.6μm), and Band 6 (2.2μm) CONUS imagery, shown below
The evolution of the fire is more evident in the animations of the GOES-16 imagery of the Band 5 (1.6μm), Band 6 (2.2μm) and Band 7 (3.9μm) channels
About 40 minutes later, NOAA-20 flew over the region. Interestingly the VIIRS Active Fire (VAF) Product as run in CSPP did not pick up the fires from the plant in both the I and M band products
Though in the I04 (3.75μm)band a (relatively) warm spot could be seen in the area of the fire.
This is potentially due to the clouds over the region, as seen in the IR (I05, 11μm) imagery. The clouds cause both the visible and heat to be scattered, something that could be seen in the NIR channels, M10 (1.61μm), and M11 (2.25μm).
Because the area is within the city, one has to scale the DNB in order to actually see the signature of the fire at the plant, as seen below
Also note how the city lights and the thermal signature from the DNB are also scattered due to the clouds over Port Neches.
Roughly 50 minutes later, at ~2:28am, SNPP passed over the same region. This time the VAF product to detect two point sources at the TCP chemical plant
along with very noticeable signatures in the NIR and SWIR channels.
One can also see the VAF Product in RealEarth and interrogate the VAF detection’s to see that these are indeed in the TCP chemical plant. In addition, you can see how long it took (~28 minutes) from when the antenna first saw NPP for this particular pass to when the data was available, with most of the time being the time it took to produce the product and not the ingestion of the product into RealEarth.
Finally, similar to the NOAA-20 pass, one does have to scale the DNB to see the fire due to the fact it is located within city limits.
Current reports state that only three people sustained minor injuries and all workers at the plant having been accounted for, and agencies are continuing to work on extinguishing the fire.
