#2340 "Sunset Stratocumulus After the Storm"

The heavy rain had moved away to the east. The next storm was still far away over the American Midwest.

Stratocumulus Cloud Streets

The northwesterly streets of stratocumulus were fading with the setting sun. It would be clear and cold overnight. The helical rolls were evident in the shreds of backlit cloud. The clouds were lined up in helical spirals in a manner that Irving Langmuir used to describe windrows of seaweed in the Sargasso Sea in 1927.

Langmuir Streaks

Rotten ice still covered the western basin of Singleton Lake. The eastern basin had been mainly ice free since early March. Langmuir streets in the open water were well developed in the surface westerly winds.

Atmosphere Ekman Spiral

This frictional veering of winds within the boundary layer of the earth is very familiar to meteorologists and is referred to as the Ekman spiral. These spirals can be found in all fluids. The Ekman spiral was first studied in reference to the ocean just like those bands of seaweed.

The atmosphere is just an ocean of air.
Every artistic observation can be a science lesson about the nature that surrounds us.

The porch light was on for my neighbor on the western shore of Singleton.

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#2339 "Sunset Before the Rain"

I always try to enjoy the sunset. It is a quiet time of the day to reflect back on the events and activities of the previous twelve hours.

There were seven jets and as many contrails in this Singleton sunset sky. The high level deformation zone had already passed well to the east of Singleton Lake. The upper levels of the atmosphere were moist and these contrails would hang around until well after dark. The gravity waves in the much lower deck of altocumulus revealed northwesterly, storm-relative winds.

I painted downstream (right) of the col
looking into the anticyclonic companion

I believe these clouds were supported by the paired cyclonic vorticity maximum across the deformation zone from the anticyclone of the warm conveyor belt. I had to ponder this for a while and use my right hand until the various pieces of the weather puzzle fit together best. It is OK to be unsure at times and await new confirming data.

It would seem that the jets were riding this tail wind to get to their destination as well. The contrails were still catching the last rays of the sun. The colours of the sunset horizon were very strong and exciting. Rain at times heavy was beyond the horizon.

I might have guessed but I did not know that the next day would dawn with a declaration of emergency for Ontario. Other provinces would follow. I was self-quarantine-ing anyway at Singleton Lake trying to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Corona Virus Disease 2019) and quite enjoying the quiet opportunity to continue with my series of weather panels.

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#2338 "Sunday Sunrise"

This is the first in the 2020 Singleton Skyscape series. The weather and subjects would come to me and being self-quarantined, I was ready to paint on. This was my normal lifestyle anyway so I embraced the opportunity to be quiet and slow and to appreciate the natural beauty of nature. I also started to write a series that would explain the vocabulary of lines and swirls in the sky. The first post was "Cloud Shapes and Lines in the Atmosphere:Cloud Shapes and Lines in the Atmosphere".
Every adversity offers an opportunity and I was not going to let the chance pass me by.

The sky was full of contrail cirrus. The impacts COVID-19 had yet to have an impact on the airlines. The sun was on my back and it felt good even though the temperature was a chilly minus 6 Celsius. The winds were out of the north from a ridge of high pressure. What should have been a clear sky was not. The thin cirrus became invisible as the sun angles got higher but the cloud and ice crystals were still there turning the blue sky a bit more grey. The colours were fleeting and I had to finish this in the studio.

The water vapour images reveal that the upper atmosphere was certainly moist. The hang-back deformation zone of the comma head had not yet cleared eastern Ontario. The moisture would aid in the creation of these long lived cirrus contrails. By afternoon the skies were a bit more blue.

I remembered it was the Ides of March as well as I painted. The jet streaks reminded me of the stabs that did Caesar in. Caesar was apparently stabbed 23 times. Aside from being March 15th, the other linkage to the story of the assassination of Cesar were the numerous contrails slicing through what should have been blue sky with only thin water vapour overhead - no clouds. 

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#2337 "Georgian Archipelago Stormy Weather"

I wanted to let my hair down and wear out some brushes. I really wore some brushes out. This painting is based on #2328 "Granite Pines and an Autumn Storm".

#2328 "Granite Pines and an Autumn Storm" Pixels Link

This particular expanse of granite caught my eye because of the numerous glacial chatter marks. A chatter mark is a wedge shaped scar left by the chipping of a bedrock surface by rock fragments carried in the base of a glacier. The marks tend to be crescent-shaped and oriented at right angles to the direction of ice movement. The ancient rock was pitted and scarred all over its surface by the work of the glaciers that left the area 11,000 years ago.

The approaching autumn storm was another important story in this painting. The Langmuir streets of cirrus were piling up behind the deformation zone of the warm conveyor belt. The layers of cloud were getting lower and thicker further to the west. Gravity waves were also embedded in the cirrus revealing the direction of the wind in the stable layer of the atmosphere - just like waves on Georgian Bay.

The vegetation was shaped by the prevailing onshore westerlies. The large pine was twisted with the wind. All vegetation displayed a definite lean with the winds.

I took some artistic liberties to enhance the motion and the flows in this dynamic environment. The oils might make you dizzy and that was my deliberate intention. Sorry.

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#2336 "Cursive Writing in the Sky"

This is based on #2326 "Cirrus Lines".

#2326 "Cirrus Lines"

Every sky is another and very different challenge. I keep trying various techniques to realistically interpret the complexities of the many layers and depths of the three dimensional atmosphere - with a minimal number of strokes of the brush. Too many brush strokes can steal the life out of the painting. Polishing a brush strokes makes everything flat.

This is a meteorologically very interesting overcast sky filled with cirrus. There are cirrus Langmuir streets parallel to the winds bringing the heat and moisture to the Parry Sound Archipelago. There are cirrus gravity waves in the stable layers of the warm conveyor belt that are everywhere perpendicular to the winds like waves on a lake. There are multiple deformation zones but the most obvious one and the only one I fully included is the one just above the horizon that leads the next and deeper layer of warm conveyor belt moisture. Deformation zones are the leading edge of the moisture at a particular layer and result from the stretching of the air laterally. Deformation is a beautiful process and is the key to unlocking a lot of the dynamic features that drive the weather. There is also cirrocumulus instability producing mare's tails shafts of ice crystal virga. Cirrostratus is the backdrop of this meteorological tale that mutes the deep blues of an unclouded sky.

Self Quarantine-ing February 2020

Cursive writing was once central to the education system. The flow of thoughts followed the flow of the words. The process of cursive writing requires that you focus on the content of your composition and this requires your entire brain to get involved in the process. The synthesis of art and writing encourages the brain to retain the information while improving your motor skills and making you a better speller. I knew and admired some whose cursive writing was clear and concise and quite simply a work of art. I believe that slowing down and appreciating the cursive messages in the sky can have similar effects.

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#2335 "Granite Swirls"

There are at least two sides to every island. This is the opposite side of #2309 "Wind Swept Georgian Rocks". The swirls in this particular rock were tortuous like those in a well mixed marble cake. It is hard to believe that at one time, these rocks were a very hot fluid. Thinking of that and looking at the rock is really quite dizzying.

I painted what I saw...

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#2334 "Langmuir Sunset"

This was a memorable sunset. It illustrated a lot of meteorology that is very important - at least to me. It was also very colourful. That sunset is now locked in oils.

Langmuir streets have been well studied for their occurrence in bodies of water. The atmosphere is just an ocean of air. It surprises me that they remain virtually unknown and unstudied in the world of meteorology. The processes in the gaseous fluids are comparable if not identical to those in the ocean. Langmuir streets exhibit the following.

• There is a stable layer (tropopause among many others). 
• There is a current in the fluid (jet stream among many others). 
• There is a material to make the primary current and secondary circulations visible (water vapour and cloud). 
• Helical circulations paralleling this current creates areas of updraft and downdraft. 
• The natural patterns are beautiful whether in the water or in the sunset sky. 

Langmuir streets are common in the moisture of the warm conveyor belt as witnessed in this sunset. Langmuir streets also comprise snowsquall bands aided by the instability of cold air passing over the warm waters of the Great Lakes for example. Clouds streets of cumulus are also shaped by these Langmuir processes.

These were three obvious Langmuir streets flowing toward a subtle cirrus deformation zone in the sunset sky of Sunday February 23rd, 2020. The moisture in the Langmuir streets was thickest in the middle. The moisture appeared to spread equally outward in both directions from their central axis. I believe that one current in a fluid can generate multiple helical circulations even though the circulations will be weaker further away from the energy source of the primary flow and energy source.

The leading edge of the Langmuir moisture spread laterally the most along the deformation zone. Further upstream the moisture stayed closer to the central axis of the Langmuir streets. I watched these clouds transform over the course of the sunset. Fascinating. Thank you Irving Langmuir (1881-1957).

It is typical to have most of the moisture associated with a warm conveyor belt directed toward the col - which is along the central axis of the warm conveyor belt. There was not yet a lot of moisture in this flow which allowed the Langmuir streets to shine. The companion vortices straddling this particular warm conveyor belt were not strong enough to create the "delta void" in which case the moisture is swirled away from the deformation zone and unable to reach the col.

A thin band of cirrus revealed the intersection of moisture with the three dimensional deformation skin - almost directly overhead. Another and thicker layer of moisture was approaching on the western horizon. This cloud looked like altostratus to me. Further to the west I suspect the the cloud was even thicker and capable of producing snow. Nimbostratus was coming at us. The atmosphere vectorially adds the circulations of the warm conveyor belt, the Langmuir Streets and the deformation zone to shape the clouds. The atmosphere sculpts this moisture easily and without any hesitation or detailed thought processes. It takes a bit longer for an artist looking up at the sky and asking why? Every line has a story to tell.

A jet was headed to Europe delivering the passengers to the dawn of a new day while still bathed in the sun of the current day at those high altitudes. The contrail flared outward dramatically immediately behind the jet. Why? Was the jet accelerating? Trumpeter swans were landing in to spend the night and perhaps a few days of "R and R" in the open water of Jim Day Rapids. This Singleton property is a sanctuary for everything.

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#2333 "February Greys"

I painted and wrote this before COVID-19 really hit the news. I was well aware of the pandemic and realized that self-isolation was a good thing. Happily, it was also the lifestyle of the natural hermit that I enjoyed.

The first question people generally asked after we retired was "where do you plan to travel?". The answer was always the same. There is no place like home. Dorothy understood that after she had her adventure in Oz and realized that the Wizard was just someone hiding behind a curtain and trying to pull the strings in controlling the actions of others. There is no reason to escape to anywhere. The best times to stay home are during the worst winter storms. A back-up generator and loads of well-seasoned, stacked firewood ensure that we will always be more than comfortable. Home is like a sanctuary and I find solace in the nature and the forests that surround us.

Thankfully I do not suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Some people I know do. The shades of grey in winter makes them blue. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder subset in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the time exhibit depressive symptoms at the same time each year. That time of year is most commonly in winter and the onset of SAD begins in the autumn before Christmas. Common symptoms include sleeping too much, having little to no energy, and overeating. SAD is being studied intensively. I do not worry about my mental health much. Maybe I should. Instead I simply go outside to paint if there is no windchill.

The afternoon glow of mid winter forecast that the sun was only going to get warmer with each passing day. It might still be a bit too cold to sit in those comfortable red chairs but those days were on the horizon as well. Snow and ice covered the chairs anyway so sitting there would have been extra chilly as well as uncomfortable. Those grey clouds told the weather story and there was even some instability in those layers of ice crystals. Those embedded cumulus bumps in the grey layers would be more than enough to produce a flurry. This was a fun time at the easel with lots of old paint.

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#2332 "Contrail Ribbons"

This is the first in the 2020 series of Singleton skies. The jet traffic headed to Europe was especially heavy but I guess that was to be expected for a Saturday. The contrails had fanned out because of turbulence. They had initially formed in a flat plane (so to speak) that was then twisted like a ribbon. Using my left-hand instead of applying the much more typical right-hand rule, with my thumb pointing in the direction of the jet, my fingers described the sense that these ribbons of contrails appeared to twist. I do not recall ever observing this ribbon twisting of contrails before. I had to record the memory in oils.

There was quite a lot of cirrus that had already passed over and east of Singleton during the day in the wake of the leading edge of the highest level deformation zone. Thin cirrostratus blanketed the skies overhead. The upper atmosphere was indeed moist and already very prepared to make these long-lasting and persistent contrails. The well-developed and layered warm conveyor belt of the next winter storm was on the western horizon with altostratus and nimbostratus as well. The ice was still thick on Singleton Lake. I was still using the old paints from the Parry Sound series and that provided a lot of texture to the surface of the painting.

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