Phil Chadwick's Art: #2967 "Smoky Sky Sunset Cattle"

#2967 "Smoky Sky Sunset Cattle"
12x16 by 3/4 inches
Started 9:30 am Sunday, August 3rd, 2025

This is another image taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. The Boreal Forests were burning. The smoky skies resulted in stunningly colourful skies around the globe. Like most people, the cows on the hilltop were blissfully unaware while they munched on the choice grasses not yet parched by the "Heat Dome" drought.

The sky was eerily similar to that recorded in #2966 "Fiery November Sunrise over Singleton". The science was the same. One can only see the lowest portions of the underlit altocumulus gravity waves. The wave troughs are closest to the ground and intercept the fleeting light from the sun. The gravity wave crests are higher, and the sunlight is blocked from reaching that portion of the cloud from underneath. The following graphic briefly explains this science as well as the intense, fiery colours.

Such illumination is fleeting, lasting only minutes. As the sun continues to rise, the layer of cloud blocks the sun and the light show is terminated.

The cattle and hill were strongly backlit in this sunset view, looking west. The clear sky between the brightly lit cloud bands was the colour of smoke and the real focus of my interest. The multiple cloud bands can be explained as swells in the atmospheric ocean originating from an intense storm further to the west. It requires some meteorological detective work, but it will be fun, like a murder mystery.

One can visualize the layer of the stable subsidence inversion at the top of the Heat Dome as a large blanket. The term "Heat Dome" is not standard meteorological terminology, but it does communicate the oppressive heat, drought and wildfires that characterize these blocking patterns. The average westerly winds cause the small gravity waves featured in the painting. Stronger, more distant westerly winds shake the entire sheet, producing the large swells with the smaller wind waves superimposed.

Without the swells, the entire "blanket" would be a flat layer of cloud illuminated from underneath. With the large gravity wave swells superimposed on the stable layer, only the cloud within the wave crests persists. The cloud within the troughs of the swells dissipates below the lifted condensation level of the air mass. The following graphic summarizes that science. The red line is the lifted condensation level for the sunset in this particular air mass.

In this situation, both the wind waves and swell waves were generated by westerly winds. This is characteristic of the winds on the northern edge of the large Heat Dome that has dominated the summer of 2025.

The weaker jet stream resulting from global warming completes high-amplitude meanders as it circumvents the Northern Hemisphere. The Heat Dome is just a large high-pressure system within the northern meander of such a jet stream. These blocking patterns can persist for weeks, sometimes aided by neighbouring circulations creating the "King of all Blocking Patterns": a REX Block.

Storms that could violently shake the blanket of the Heat Dome are typically derecho-type events triggered by severe convective energy being released on the northwestern fringe of the blocking high. Such an event occurred on July 27th over northwestern Ontario. These severe events are becoming more common over eastern Canada due to climate change, but that is another story. The thunderstorms that develop ripple eastward, remaining on the northern fringe of the Heat Dome.

The area circled in the above image highlights the probable location of damaging downburst winds northwest of Thunder Bay. This event was powerful enough to shake the Heat Dome inversion, creating the pronounced gravity waves in the sunset skies near Singleton. Winds of 35m/s or 126 k/hr within the circled light orange area on the right, mix down to the surface, probably knocking down large swaths of Boreal forest. Data Credit to my friend Ron @mrwx4caster

Gravity waves occur all the time but are only revealed by the cloud droplet tracers, which make them visible. The sharpness of the edges of the cloud bands is directly linked to the significance of the meteorological forces at work. Like on the ocean, the wavelength and amplitude of the waves are directly related to the energy of the disturbance.

The brilliant sunset featuring backlit cattle can be used to understand events occurring far to the northwest. Meteorology can be very much like a whodunit mystery, searching for subtle clues. The science included above suggests how every sky can have a story to tell. This also explains why the story behind this painting is a tad long... Sometimes, "eyes would roll" in the Weather Centre when I attempted to describe such interesting and significant events. Oh my...

#2967 "Smoky Sky Sunset Cattle" nearing completion on the Studio easel.

As a matter of artistic principle, I avoid black in my paintings. Black and its colour complement of white can easily make grey. But much more expressive and unique greys can be found by mixing other complementary colour combinations. My frugal approach is to employ the colours already on the palette to make an appropriate but unique grey, consistent with the painting in question. Waste not, want not!

I believe that is how Tom Thomson achieved some of the greys in his works as well. Artist-quality oils are appropriately expensive, and Thomson was no more financially able than any other artist to just scrape those colours away. The following is some paint found on a stump near Grand Lake, where Tom Thomson painted in the summer of 1916. Tom could have made an interesting shade of grey with those oils, but I digress..