#2979 "Singleton Sunrise Sunday September 14th"

#2979 "Singleton Sunrise Sunday September 14th"
16 x 20 oils on canvas started at
9:15 am on Thursday, October 30th, 2025

John Verburg took this picture of a beautiful sunrise, probably from very close to where he was standing to take the image recorded in #2976 "September Singleton Sunset over Point Paradise". This sunrise sky was viewed on Sunday, September 14th, 2025, at approximately 6:36 AM. I would not have seen this panoramic vista had it not been for my friend John. 

Our place on the eastern shore of Singleton Lake was dark. We try to not contribute to light pollution, so that's the way home looks at night, pretty much all of the time. Battery-operated LED candles provide all the light and ambiance that we need. Motion sensor lights flick on as needed when we move around outside in the dark. 

A weak cold front was on the way. The disorganized lines of altocumulus were Langmuir streaks overrunning the departing warm frontal surface. The deformation zone leading the cirrostratus was already far to the northeast. The cold upper trough was just digging deeper over eastern Ontario. The entire weather pattern may have been fairly weak, but the sky and the reflection were too beautiful not to record. 

The following graphic puts the painting into the weather context. Note how the water vapour and even the visible image are not very excited about the clouds overhead the yellow star, which locates Singleton Lake. The sky is much more vivid from the ground!

I painted the Langmuir Streaks following the direction of the warm conveyor belt - the labelled block arrows in the following graphic.

That flow delivers heat and moisture toward the poles, helping to keep the Earth's atmosphere in balance. It occurs through the entire depth of the atmosphere as depicted in the following graphic. 

Warm Conveyor Belt Conceptual Model with Layered Cloud and Multiple Deformation Zones

The linear deformation zone (DZ) is the leading edge of the warm conveyor belt. The DZ stretches perpendicularly to the direction of the flow drawn between the swirls generated by the flow itself. The deformation zone is actually a three-dimensional skin that encapsulates the warm air. The physics of water and ice encourage moisture to form into layers of cloud, so that the DZ skin is seen as DZ lines where those cloud layers intersect it. Nature and physics can be really quite beautiful. 

Your right hand is the Coriolis Hand in the Northern  Hemisphere. With your fingers following the curvature of the swirls, your thumb must point upward on the left flank (looking with the flow) and down on the right side. Your Corilois Hand can follow the "Croquet Hoop" that encircles the flow. The lower portion of the warm conveyor belt, "Croquet Hoop" occurs in the turbulent layer of air adjacent to the surface.  Every puff of wind must generate these vortices exactly like smoke rings.   

The following graphic summarizes the straight-line deformation zone in the Northern Hemisphere using your Coriolis Hand. The lines and swirls that shape clouds/moisture in the atmospheric frame of reference are nestled together in this conceptual model. All of the swirls must be the same magnitude to create a straight-line deformation zone, and it is a good example to start with. All you need is your Coriolis Hand and some time to watch the clouds move. We can practice using these concepts on another satellite view of the sunrise of September 14th. 

The Nighttime Microphysics RGB satellite image reveals subtle features in this situation that are invisible in the typical water vapour and visible satellite images included above. The complete nature of the sunrise on Sunday, September 14th, can now be fully understood using this product. The convex deformation zone occurs with the flow of the warm conveyor belt is stronger than that on the other side of the deformation zone. The system must move in the direction of that flow. Animation of the satellite image makes these motions obvious as doens watching the actual clouds from the ground. 

The graphic above uses a stroke of my paddle in a surface filled with duckweed to illustrate the creation of swirls and lines. The physics is the same in the sunrise atmosphere that I painted below. 

Nature inspires and continues to make sense when not much else does. It might take a few re-readings for some of the more subtle points described above to become clear. That's OK and only natural... 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick