About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Not expected, but it missed anyway
Woke up to Cumulonimbus clouds NW-N of Catalina. Hmmm. Here’s the unexpected, pretty sight just after sunrise:
Well, the end of the story (told in the captions) is that a windshift producing this line of heavy Cu and a Cb or two and it “struck” Catalina about 11 AM; the wind turned from the SW to the N, but the heavy line of clouds riding it were nowhere to be seen at that time; the last Cumulonimbus cloud disappearing beyond the Charoleau Gap. Tough to take after hopes up.
Only in the early afternoon did a gift of a few drops from a towering Cumulus directly overhead produce the final surprise. The drops fell from 1:22 PM to 1:23 PM. I rushed outside to see what the heck was doing it and here that cloud is (last two photos) from the bottom up.
Mods see afternoon isolated Cumulonimbus today.
The End.
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.