SST (ACSPO 2km)

More detail

NOAA makes this map, and the newest picture is about a day and a half old.

Everywhere it shows a color, a satellite saw that water. The layer covers the Gulf of America, the East Coast and Baja.

It reads cooler than the water does on a sunny afternoon, and a break on it does not show where the break is this afternoon. It will not match your gauge exactly either: a satellite reads the very top of the water, while your gauge reads about three feet down.

How it relates to the other temperature layers. SST (MUR 1 km) is a daily map with the cloud holes filled in by estimate. Use this layer to see what was really measured, and SST (MUR 1 km) for the full picture with no holes. The GOES-19 layers are fresher: SST (L3 Composite) and SST (L2) are hourly, and SST (2hr Composite) is the freshest temperature in the app. Sea Surface Temperature, from HYCOM (U.S. Navy model), is a forecast, not a measurement. All of them share one color scale. To see the breaks in this same picture drawn as lines, use SST (ACSPO) Fronts. For temperature below the surface, use Water Temperature at Depth.

If the colors look wrong after you change settings, reset the range in Layer Settings. The default is 41.9 °F to 91.4 °F.

The numbers

How often it updates	Once a day, one frame per day
How fresh it usually is	About a day and a half old
How detailed it is	About 1 nautical mile (2 km)
Where it covers	Gulf of America, East Coast and Baja
How far back you can look	8 days back
Goes blank under cloud?	Yes, on purpose
Observed or modeled	Observed. Nothing is filled in
What you see on screen	Fahrenheit by default, Celsius if you switch. A nighttime picture

Source: a satellite picture from ACSPO (NOAA), four polar-orbiting satellites.