#2568 "Thursday Sunset Swells"

#2568 "Thursday Sunset Swells" 9x12

We always try to catch the sunset. The show of light and weather is inspirational and a perfect end to the day. 

This particular sunset sky was on a Thursday. The day of the week does not matter in the slightest way. Weather was on the way. Just over an inch of rain would fall overnight and provide the musical background on the metal roof in accompaniment to the honking of the Canada geese. I had been writing about gravity waves in the sky. These clouds told the story of wind waves and swells within the atmospheric ocean. I felt that it was worth recording in oils. Art and science are very much the same. 

The pattern of large gravity waves overhead also stretched to the western horizon. These bands were swells in the atmosphere generated from the stronger winds near the centre of the system. The updraft crests in these swells were the bands of clouds that I painted while the downdraft troughs were cloud free. The smaller gravity waves embedded within these large swells spoke of the system relative winds that were at quite an angle to the swells. These patterns are very interesting and reveal a lot about the approaching storm. 

Satellite View Downward on a
Similar Cloud Pattern

The smaller gravity waves must tilt downstream with the stronger winds at their tips. The deformation zone conceptual model provides the answer as to why the system relative winds are stronger and pointing to the southeast. Using your Coriolis Hand and pointing your fingers in the direction of the winds that create these secondary gravity waves makes your thumb point downward. The anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt was overhead and to the west. This was confirmed by looking at the water vapour satellite imagery. 

The entire system would cross Singleton Lake eventually but the heaviest precipitation would remain further to the north. 

Crepuscular rays from the setting sun added to the angles in the sky. These rays are parallel in the real world even though they appear to diverge as a result of the train-track perspective. The viewing angles always need to be considered when interpreting cloud bands. 

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