Tuesday, May 15, 2018

#0086 "Misty Bayswater"

Another memory from the fall of 1979...

This was a very foggy summers day at Bayswater, Nova Scotia very near to Hubbards during the spring of 1979.The coastal waters would have still been very cold and almost any warm air mass would have been moist enough to have a dew point exceeding that chilly temperature by three degrees Celsius.

The dew point analysis when combined with the sea surface temperature chart was the key to predicting when and where the advection fog would develop. Once the fog banks were formed it would drift capriciously with the breezes seeming to come and go at will. The diurnal ocean and land breezes would get involved in the fog game as well. There were also physical processes working to dissipate the fog such as subsidence or downslope or heating from the ground or the circulations generated from solar radiation. Other forces opposing those above would result in the fog getting thicker. The meteorologist job was to predict which of these processes would dominate and what the effects on the fog banks might be in advance of that happening. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the weather. Never stop learning...

The rocky outcrops of Bayswater were littered with the shells of countless crustaceans dropped by the gulls. The birds are clever enough to know just how high they must take their meals so that the drop with the sudden stop on the rock would be enough to break them open.

I rarely paint with a palette knife but this is the exception.

I would have painted this in the guest bedroom of the condo in Mill Woods, Edmonton Alberta. We had moved from Nova Scotia so that I could pursue the Masters of Meteorology Program with some of the very well respected professors at the University of Alberta.
 For this and much more...

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#2849 "Wood Ducks Standing on the Log By the Bay"

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