The Beauty and Subtleties of Today's Weather

There is so much negative energy going around these days about the coronavirus and national politics, that is good to stand back and acknowledge the great beauty of our natural environment .

Before sunrise, the Crystal Mountain cam showed Mt. Rainier, partially illuminated by a setting moon.  If you look careful, a cap cloud/lenticular is seen over the mountain's crest.


The sunrise view from the Seattle Space Needle Panocam was gorgeous, with Mt. Rainier in the background.  To the east, there was some low-level clouds and fog.    With clear skies and very cold temperatures (many areas were below freezing), a good frosting was apparent in many locations.


As the sun rose about the horizon, the low clouds starting streaming over the city--just stunning.


But there was more.... a lot more to appreciate.   The Seattle Panocam image facing towards the Olympics around 8 AM showed a ring of light--a glory-- surrounding the upper shadow of the Space Needle on the low clouds that had moved in during the last hour.  Glories are associated with atmospheric diffraction, the pending of light by objects and the essential wave-like nature of light.


But look carefully...do you see the line of low clouds extending down the Sound? Something interesting was going on.

Here is another picturetaken  a bit earlier that shows the line clearly.  The moon is right about the clouds (left side) and a ferry is sailing underneath.


The line was even apparent on high resolution weather satellite imagery, and you can see fog/low clouds over Seattle and Snoqualmie Valley as well.  There is another set of cloud lines over the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca.


 What are these lines?   They are the result of converging land breezes, as cold air pushed from both shores and collided over the central Sound and Strait.  One of my earlier blogs described this phenomenon.   Colliding land breezes produces upward motion, which in turn forms clouds.

Anyway, enjoying the great natural beauty around us and understanding our physical environment is a great solace in these trying times.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why so little lightning in the Pacific Northwest? And a very nice weekend ahead.

Image
During the past 24-hours, there have been a few lightning strokes over the region (see below) but nothing to write home about (see below). It turns out that the Pacific Northwest and the remainder of the West Coast have some of the lowest frequencies of thunderstorms in the entire country (see below). But why?    My podcast provides the answer. And I also give the weekend forecast....and I think most will like what I have to say. To listen to my podcast, use the link below or access it through your favorite podcast service. Some major podcast servers:     Like the podcast? Support on Patreon 
Read more

The Time of Year You Can See the Air Move

Image
  Most of the time, you can not see the air move.   You can feel it, but the complex, turbulent motions are invisible to you, except when it interacts with leaves and branches on trees and plants. But for a few weeks of the year, the sky is full of small, cotton-like tuffs that like a natural MRI machine reveals the complex three-dimensional motions of the atmosphere.   Cottonwood season.  And we right in the middle of it.   Being cottonwood aware is of particular value this year.  It reveals the active dispersion and movement of air that makes the outdoors essentially COVID safe, and thus should be of some comfort for those nervous about transmission outside. Cottonwood seeds are embedded in small cotton-like fibers.   A million seeds weigh about 3 pounds.  Yes, each seed and tuff weights about .000003 pounds.   And that fact, plus the cottonwood tuff, means that these seeds fall VERY, VERY, VERY slowly.   So slowly that they are excellent markers for the three-dimensional flow of the
Read more

A Much Colder Than Normal April: But How Unusual?

Image
  April was a chilly month over the Northwest, but how chilly?     It turns out the answer depends on where you are located. The difference between this April's temperatures from normal across Washington State (below) shows that the entire state was well below normal.  The eastern side of the state was particularly frigid:  some areas were more than 6 degrees below normal.   Considering the west side of the state, the April mean temperatures at SeaTac Airport are plotted below.   This April was the coolest since 2011. April 2020 was in 15th place for the coolest April since the mid-1940s and was a bit more than 4F below normal.  So if you felt that you were cheated out of normal spring warmth...you are right. But if you really wanted to experience extraordinary April cold you had to be east of the Cascade crest. Consider Yakima.  Wow.  It had the third coldest April temperature since the mid-1940s.   And the all-time record in 1955 was only slightly colder. If you want a longer-te
Read more