#2546 "Portsmouth Sunrise Weather"

This was the sunrise on the third and last morning of the International Plein Air Painters Worldwide Paint Out 2021.  The global paint out was in conjunction with the Kingston School of Art (KSOA) and Paint the Town. I thought that I would start painting a series of weather observations. The sky and inland seas of Lake Ontario were going to be the most exciting part of the turbulent morning. 

The first observation was the sunrise view of the convective cloud embedded in the warm conveyor belt of the southwesterly flow. The bright deformation zone bands of cirrus were at different levels and were high enough to be fully illuminated by the rising sun. The lowest level deformation zone was bowed to the southwest with the low level cold conveyor belt while the other higher lines of cirrus were arched northeastward with the warm conveyor belt. 

The white hot sun was just rising above the thick deck of low level cloud. That solid mass of stratocumulus was drifting slowly toward the southwest guided by the cold conveyor belt of the approaching system. The cloud shapes and the updrafts of the convective cloud elements revealed these northeasterly winds which are an important part of the conveyor belt conceptual model of mid latitude storms.

I observed and painted this quickly, confident that the clouds were correct - my interpretation could be flawed but that is the weather. The weather and clouds change by the minute. I did not have my pocket laser ceilometer with me although I often thought of inventing one. I could have really used it to better understand the complexity of this sunrise sky.

The wind was creating some very significant waves that were crashing on to the point that held the Kingston Penn. 

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