#0274 "LOOK-UP"

From the summer of 1990..

This is a stratocumulus cloud deck in July 1990 - I was lying on my back in the backyard of our home on Western Avenue in Schomberg, Ontario. The view is toward the northwest with the clouds front lit by the morning sunshine. The gravity waves were the result of southerly winds blowing over the Oak Ridges Moraine and the remains of the nocturnal radiational inversion. The lines of cloud are too close together to be attributed to unstable cloud streets of stratocumulus. Continued daytime heating would raise the surface temperature to that required for surface based convection. At that point the cloud bases of the stratocumulus would be raised higher than their tops. This morning layer of stratocumulus would fizzle into clear air to be replaced with higher based cumulus clouds that would be much more widely scattered. There would of course be a line of cumulus organized along the Lake Ontario lake breeze that would push northward during the day. This line of cumulus would likely stay south of the crest of the Oak Ridges Moraine leaving Schomberg with less cloud.

To deduce the afternoon weather one would need to diagnosis the stability of the air mass and the presence of any small pulses of energy known to meteorologists as short waves. For this I always resorted to tephigrams and the water vapour imagery. Thunderstorms would be possible in an unstable air mass with low level moisture and some lifting agent and trigger like a short wave. Weather is always fun.

As a society we have lost the art of simply slowing down and taking the time to look up and enjoy the sky and the weather. The clouds have a story to tell. If one is a student of meteorology the cloud shapes reveal the moisture content and stability of the air mass as well as the winds blowing within that atmospheric frame of reference. Otherwise you can simply enjoy the fascinating shapes and colours of the clouds. Both approaches are equally valid.