#2991 "A Swell February Morning"

#2991 "A Swell February Morning"
14 X 18 (inches).
Started 9:00 am Sunday, January 18th, 2026, 2025

Blustery southwesterly winds and chilly temperatures convinced me to stay within the Singleton Studio. This inspiration was from Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023, during the heart of COVID. Conditions back then were very similar to the Sunday morning when I found time to pick up my brushes again. 

On that day, a warm conveyor belt was approaching from the southwest. The details were clearly written in the sky, identifying the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The winter storm was stronger than average and had created large swells in the atmospheric ocean. The air mass was relatively moist. The lifted condensation level of that flow was near the bottom of the trough in the large gravity waves of the swells. Smaller amplitude and short-wavelength gravity waves were imprinted on the stable layer at the top of the swells. These smaller gravity waves were almost at right angles to the swells, creating a lop-sided lattice pattern in the cloud tops. The following graphic details what these observations mean.

The storm is steered in the direction of the average wind over the area of the storm. Cloud shapes are created purely by winds relative to this mean within the atmospheric frame of reference. Those are the patterns that can reveal the true dynamics of the weather. 

Conceptual Model of the Swells and Wind Gravity Waves
on the Warm and Moist Side of the Deformation Zone

The Jet Stream Core was downstream and to the right of the above graphic. The winds along the axis of the jet stream would be increasing into that core, thus requiring the deformation zone to be paralleling that flow. The science behind this deduction can be found in "A Jet Streak with a Paddle". This research was never published with COMET or EUMETSAT but formed the basis of my approach to understanding atmospheric patterns back in the 1990s. 

Those are the kind of thoughts that kept me busy on night shifts at the weather centre. I felt it was vital to understand the principles of atmospheric dynamics so that it might be better predicted and communicated to others. Computer simulations that comprise NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) do not "explain" or "understand" in the human terms of pattern recognition. I freely shared these concepts, and some peers found them to be quite useful. 

The large swells were drifting northeastward with the surge of the warm conveyor belt. The smaller wave patterns were drifting southeasterly, diverging from the col of the deformation zone pattern, which was further to the north. These gravity waves were only visible on the leading edge of the swell, although the gravity waves themselves certainly prevailed, riding the stable layer on top of the larger swells. The patterns in the clouds would have been better observed from an aircraft. Gravity may have kept me on the ground, but it was essential to create the diagnostic patterns in the sky. 

The average flow will advect the gravity waves along. Watching the drift of the gravity waves for just a few seconds will reveal the direction of that flow if you are observing it "live". For paintings, the upwind side, where the air is uniformly ascending into the wave crest, is typically sharper than the downwind edge. The rising air experiences expansional cooling, and the air parcels uniformly reach saturation. The downwind descending cloud experiences compressional warming due to increasing pressure, but also mixes with unsaturated air parcels before becoming cloud-free. That edge can thus be a bit fuzzy. 

The Singleton forest cast long shadows at 7:35 am with the sun barely clearing the trees. These shadows trailed across the snow-covered ice. The morning light also cast a warm tone on the shoreline and deciduous trees of the Carolinian forest. 

Water levels were high. The eastern basin of Singleton Lake was mainly ice-free, which was unusual for February, when people are usually ice fishing. 

My goal was to capture the colours of mid-winter and do justice to the dynamics of the cloud patterns. I treat most cloud paintings as another opportunity to learn and teach about cloud dynamics and meteorology.  I have been doing that for a very long time... perhaps it is time to stop and simply paint. Hmmm...

My Dad built that beautiful studio easel and three others just like it in the 1990s. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick