Capital Weather Gang usually does a better job explaining things to the masses, so that's a little disappointing. Having a similar conversation with family and

Capital Weather Gang usually does a better job explaining things to the masses, so that's a little disappointing. Having a similar conversation with family and friends, it's challenging to explain the hype. Weather is incredibly complex and difficult to model and predict. We have multiple sources of truth to provide the input to our models: radar sites spaced hundreds of miles apart, balloons that are launched twice a day and hundreds of miles apart, METAR stations that record ground observations, satellite, etc. Satellite data is the closest you can get to seeing the entire atmosphere as an interconnected system with no gaps in data, but is limited by being a top-down view (better spectral information will help), somewhat low resolution, and 5-15 minute update intervals (storms can go from nothing to tornadic in 45 minutes). CIMSS and other groups of researchers are doing great work with our current satellite data like identifying when supercells are likely to produce tornadoes and estimating instability in a column of the atmosphere. Increasing spectral information, resolution, and frequency will enable products to be refined and new products to come out - such as lightning detection, which currently relies on private networks. Severe weather nowcasting is only one of the areas that will benefit from this, but the one that I'm familiar with as an amateur meteorologist. GOES-R has the potential to cut false alarm rate and increase warning times for severe weather. Weather nerds are rather excited, as this stands to be a powerful new tool.