About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Your evening sililoquoy with a Cumulonimbus
Along with this photo sequence, I reprise the thoughts you had as a CMJ1 yesterday as you watched a truly stunning cloud drama evolve:
6:01 PM. Huh. Kind of an isolated patch of dying Cumulus, transitioning to Stratocumulus (Strato, “flat”, Cumulus, “heap.” Huh. Flat heap? Kinda funny. A little late in the day for anything to happen, that’s for sure.6:16 PM. Well, that’s kind of rude. Must’ve heard my comment.6:24 PM. Hah-hah; that rude “finger” came off. But look, rain’s coming out! Wow! And a much fatter turret is emerging. How interesting! Very surprising this late in the day.6:26 PM. This is really getting interesting! More rain coming out, a whole series of turrets are emerging! How can this be? Hardly another cloud in the sky, they’ve all died away, but this one seems to be on Red Bull.6:34 PM. Good grief, can hardly believe how big this has gotten after looking like a dead bit cloud! When the rain is being released the cloud is no longer carrying all that weight and can spurt upward.6:36 PM. Bigger yet.6:39 PM. Truly magnificent. Since the main vertical riser does not show clear evidence of being fibrous, this would be call a Cumulonimbus calvus, “calvus” meaning bald. To the left was older cloud which did appear fibrous. In those cases, the cloud would be termed a Cb capillatus. Not a lot of lightning with this yesterday, so updrafts probably not extreme. Updrafts separate hail and smaller ice which provide electrification; no updraft to speak of, as in “flat” clouds, no electrification.
Nice morning, though, breezy, humid (dewpoint 65 F) with “flat heaps” (Stratocu) topping Sam Ridge now. What will happen today? Mods think some showers will form in the mid-afternoon here and there. But wind will keep the temperatures down, reduce chances of that.
Should be a pretty day regardless of what happens with the blue of the sky deepening each day as the sun recedes to the south farther each day.
Strangely, in the longer, unreliable term, the mods have been forecasting rain in AZ almost every day the last ten days of September, and this has been repeated for several runs. Huh#3.
The End; back to other work.
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1CMJ– Cloud Maven Junior, our local club. No meeting this month.
By Art Rangno
Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.
great photos on 9/15. thanks.
Thanks, Russ! It was an amazing, kind of singular “presentation.”