#2378 "Singleton Classic Cirrus Summer Sunset"

They say never use an aliteration. Sometimes the same sound at the beginning of a series of connected words can be distinctive and fun. There are no rules in art.

There was a lot of thin cirrus in the sunset sky. It told a very interesting story. That cirrus was in the warm conveyor belt of a small system and upper low near Buffalo, New York. The cirrus was banded into large gravity waves perpendicular to the southerly upper winds. These long parallel bands actually stretched from west to east.

There was a second set of  smaller gravity waves within the large waves. These smaller gravity waves revealed that the system relative wind was westerly. This is exactly the combination of winds that one would expect with the anticyclonic branch of the warm conveyor belt. Using your right hand and aligning your fingers with the system relative winds must point your fingers downward. The associated subsidence in the atmosphere explains the stable atmosphere and the abundance of gravity waves.The fact that there was not that much cloud in a moist air mass also suggested that the anticyclonic branch of the system was over Singleton. The water vapour image was the clincher to this difficult diagnosis.

The apparent divergence of the large parallel bands is a result of the crepuscular or train track effect. The large gravity waves must be parallel to each other even though our perspective from the ground suggest otherwise.

Looking at the larger scale, there was really a lot of moisture in the atmosphere. Tropical Storm Cristobal was currently active as a tropical cyclone weakening over Louisiana. Cristobal was the third named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the earliest known third named storm in the North Atlantic Ocean on record.

Weather is always exciting if we can afford the time to slow down and look up at the sky.

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