About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Late bloomers; Canadians forecasting wet spell just ahead
Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person1 gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.
Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.
Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:
6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.
———– 1 Best to refer to yourself in the third person if you’re wrong or surprised about something in your field of expertise.
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.