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| #2885 "Dumoine Trippers with Deformation Zone Horizon" Oils on canvas panel 5 X 7 (inches). Started 8:00 am Friday, August 2nd, 2024 from very near N46.463300 W77.768106. |
The morning sun was just clearing the forest canopy to the east. I had to turn my back to the heat and the glare of the Friday sunrise.
A group of Dumoine trippers came into view so I scratched those red canoes into the composition as they passed. Theirs would be a fun paddle going with the flow.
There was a deformation zone on the western horizon foretelling of a short-wave trough in the upper atmosphere. The swirl in the atmospheric flow might be very subtle but the linear pattern that it must produce is characteristic of the energy that produces weather. A deformation zone perpendicular to the mean flow foretold of the approach of an impulse of atmospheric energy. This was one of the most important lessons that the atmospheric patterns taught while working at CFB Shearwater and later the Atlantic Weather Centre in Bedford, Nova Scotia.
Cloud watching in the Maritimes revealed that to understand the weather, you needed to move with the wind. Clouds are shaped by the subtle variations in the wind and not by the mean flow! Once you appreciate that fact, the cloud shapes make sense and the forces controlling the weather are revealed.
These concepts go back to the 80s but try as I might, they never really caught on. It was the era of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and there were meteorologists in positions of authority advising "recent hires" like myself to look for another line of work - perhaps nuclear physics. I took the unpopular opinion that humans could process shapes and patterns better than even a modern computer and certainly better than a Commodore 64. The Commodore 64 introduced in 1982 boosted 64 KB RAM and 20 KB ROM. Wow... Many fellow meteorologists were buying those early computers but they were not in our budget with a young family.
Please don't misunderstand me, NWP certainly was a powerful tool and getting increasingly better with each passing year but given the following concepts, humans still had an important role to play. Simply,
atmospheric patterns are shaped by the deviations from the mean wind/current. The average of the flow simply moves the weather across the landscape. The subtle departures from the mean wind do all of the scuplting of the moisture patterns - an important reason why I embraced the emerging water vapour satellite imagery.
I used the weather and the wind as metaphors for life… shaped by diversity and not the average flow. It was my mantra to try to embrace and understand change. Like the weather and the wind, the elements of life are never still
I tried to explain this throughout my career with varying degrees of success and failure. Mostly the latter. Our move from Nova Scotia to the Atmospheric Environment Service's Training Branch in Toronto was supposed to give me the opportunity to teach these concepts. Large-scale dynamic lift was never accepted as a solution to a question in Training Branch's Meteorology 101. Appropriately… cloud shapes reveal the real mystery but I never got the opportunity to teach that.
The following Classic Deformation Zone Conceptual Model allows the inference of eight important meteorological features given a simple line in the sky.
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| Classic Deformation Zone Conceptual Model |
I was unsuccessful for several reasons and returned to operational science as quickly as possible. There was even one memorable class at COMET around 2015 that just could not grasp what seemed so intuitive... and correct to me. The following graphics were presented at Boulder for a COMET class in another one of those efforts. The graphics pictorially explain how a local wind increase compared to the mean wind creates a latitudinal deformation zone. The answer is always "blowing in the wind".
The first slide sets the stage for the observation of winds in earth frame of reference. These winds can be separated into two distinct components. The mean or average wind immediately to the right of the "equals" sign moves the weather across the landscape. The winds observed from a frame of reference moving at the speed of the mean wind within the green box, are responsible for shaping the atmospheric signatures.
The next graphic is associated with the pattern that results when the wind as measured in the earth frame of reference is decreased. A very characteristic deformation zone perpendicular to the decrease in wind speed is created. The green box of the winds measured within the atmospheric frame of reference is repeated with the classic deformation zone conceptual model aligned with the axis of contraction.
The next graphic is associated with the pattern that results when the wind as measured in the earth frame of reference increases. A deformation zone parallel to the increase in wind speed is created. The green box of the winds measured within the atmospheric frame of reference is repeated with the classic deformation zone conceptual model aligned with the axis of dilatation.
The following classic jet streak graphic created by my friend Professor Moore in 2004 for his COMET Module, puts both of the above wind speed changes into the proper atmospheric situation. The wind speed must increase to achieve the maximum wind observed at the core of the jet. The wind speed decreases downstream from the jet core. The above graphics allow us to understand the quasi horizontal moisture patterns created in terms of linear deformation zones.
These concepts also applied to the trippers paddling with the current of the Dumoine. Deformation zones and swirls abound in all fluids. I saw the same patterns when I paddled during those formative years. The incomparable Bill Mason was already in the process of writing the practical books on those topics. See "Path of the Paddle" and other books by Bill Mason and his family. I was seeing the same patterns but using meteorological terminology to describe them.
See "A Jet Streak with a Paddle". I never give up attempting to understand and explain the miracles and beauty of the natural world. Those attempts include both works in art and science.
The dynamics of fluids can also be recorded in the landscape. The location and shapes of the islands located within the flatwater portion of the Dumoine actually were the result of the meltwater from the last ice age nearly 20 thousand years before. The large island and Pincushion are the products of the col of a deformation zone but I will leave that for another post.
This is number twenty-two of thirty-five paintings I completed en plein air at CPAWS DRAW 2024. It was a wonderful experience with a terrific group of people. https://cpaws-ov-vo.org/draw-retreat-artists/ A portion of sales from this endeavour will go to support CPAW and keep the 'wild' in the wilderness.
For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. Here is the link to the CPAWS DRAW Collection
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