#2318 "Parry Sound Archipelago Mares Tails"

#2318 "Parry Sound Archipelago Mares Tails"

The long arc of the deformation zone was just part of the weather story told by the clouds over the Georgian Bay Archipelago. The elongated band of cloud was the leading edge of the warm conveyor belt of the approaching autumn storm. Sailors watched and listened to these weather stories in order to survive and those high, windswept clouds told them to batten down their hatches. As the proverb goes, "Mares' tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships to carry low sails."

In this painting though I was focused mainly on the "cirrus uncinus" which is from the Latin meaning "curly hooks". Most people call them mares' tails. In any event these ice crystal clouds are typically sparse in the sky and very thin. In this view across Georgian Bay I had an entire herd of horses stampeding toward Parry Sound.

The convective equestrian rump of these atmospheric horses may not be very large but long trails of ice crystals waft earthward shaped by the winds in the atmosphere. The cirrus horse typically runs faster at the higher levels of the atmosphere and the ice crystals fall into lesser winds. The result is that the icy tail lags along far behind the horsey source. The individual hairs were separated and this might be aided by some atmospheric process. Sublimation of the smaller ice crystals may warm the adjacent air parcels between the central shafts of the mare's hair where supposedly the crystals should be bigger and hang on the longest before they too sublimate into oblivion.

I wondered whether the fibrous nature of mares tails and cirrus clouds in general could be a Darwinian selection process. The larger ice crystals would certainly defy sublimation and the release of the heat of vaporization for the longest period of time. All of the large crystals from a particular source area would thus have a longer tale to tell. The smaller crystals would be the first to succumb and sublimate into oblivion. Even though the sources of both look the same from twenty thousand feet away, maybe there are differences? For example, small ripples like those on a lake could happily exist within the rump of the old grey mare. The wave crest in these ripples would convectively produce the larger ice crystals. Earth observers might not be able to resolve those small convective elements from miles away. These ripples though could have impact on crystal growth and the formation of the individual hairs in the tail.

I am not sure if anyone has solved this question or even posed it before. Many hairs come from each rump even though there only seems to be a single focus and no obvious, smaller convective elements. I am making all of this up as I do not have the instrumentation to answer the question directly. I find it interesting though and it gives me something else to think about as I paint. Sometimes it is best if you let your mind wander and wonder while you paint. It is not helpful to get tangled up in the process of the pigments on the canvas.

I would paint this same location in #2304 "Georgian Rugged Shore Pines".

For this and much more art, click on Pixels. Thank you.