#3024 "Cousin Islands Flags"

#3024 "Cousin Islands Flags" 
12 X 16 inches, oil on stretched canvas.
Started 11:30 am Monday, June 29th, 2026

Flagged trees always interest me.  Trees can tell us so much if we only pause to look. These trees have been sculpted by the relentless onshore winds. Wisely, they bend rather than break. The weather laboratory is my constant companion, as is the forest. There is a good physical reason behind the lean of every tree and every line in the sky. If you can explain each feature, then you will also understand the forest and the weather ... and be closer to nature.

The lines and folds in the ancient, banded gneiss and pink granite of the Canadian Shield are another story. Those are beyond my explanation, requiring the expertise of a geologist or a petrologist. 

My friend Cam, who took this inspirational image, knows what I enjoy painting. The elements of trees, clouds, and rocks always grab my attention. Together, they define the raw beauty of the Canadian landscape. 

Before diagnosing a scene, it is helpful to determine the time of day and the direction of view. Cam revealed these as 3:15 pm on Sunday, June 28th, 2026, looking south across the western Point of Cousin Island. The same information, except the date, could have been deduced from the trees and the cumulus clouds. But it is good to have an independent corroborating source. 

Both the flagged trees and the cumulus were leaning from right to left. The prevailing winds required to shape the pines are typically onshore and westerly on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay.  The view had to be looking southward! The red arrow in the following graphic is for the right side of the image, while the blue arrow is along the left. 

The sun was high in the western sky, so the timing had to be mid-afternoon.

The western flanks of the cumulus clouds are fully illuminated by the summer sun, high in the sky. The summer solstice had occurred the previous week. The timing of the image had to be mid-afternoon! 

The lines of cirrostratus stretching across the sky high above the cumulus allow us to complete our weather diagnosis. Cirrostratus are ice crystal clouds at the highest levels of the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere which contains most of the exciting weather. A storm was approaching from the southwest.

The gentle lift of ascending air is required to create these extensive sheets of ice crystal cloud. Such ascent is common at the leading edge of the warm conveyor belt associated with an approaching weather system. The warm air that heads northward rises for free along the constant-energy surfaces that meteorologists refer to as "isentropes". Typically, these constant-energy surfaces slope upward from the equator, reaching higher altitudes over both poles. The sharp, leading edge in the cirrostratus is a deformation zone where a layer of moisture encounters the leading edge of the warm and moist air mass. 

The following graphic illustrates the basic deformation zone conceptual model (the double-headed green arrow). I shared these lessons that the clouds taught me with anyone who was even mildly interested. There is no exam. The reward is simply understanding and appreciating the beauty of the world around us. 

If I had been there with my easel on a "paint barge" looking south, I would have watched the approaching cirrus clouds moving from my right to left as detailed in the graphic to the right. This means that Cousin Island was under the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The angle of the higher, subtle gravity waves that I included in the painting confirms this diagnosis. The implications of this are explained in several blogs within the searchable "Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster". The centre of the approaching system was aimed to the north of Parry Sound, at least for the moment. 

Langmuir Streaks of cirrus that parallel the upper winds are not described in the above graphic but can be found in several blogs of the  "Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster". The "A Jet Streak with a Paddle" blog explains why deformation zones are perpendicular to the stream flow that is decreasing in speed (as described above) but parallel to a flow that is increasing in speed. 

To deduce even more about the approaching weather, one needs to look further upstream. Water vapour imagery was always my go-to tool. The overall shape of every deformation zone is a wealth of meteorological information. The shape of the deformation zone reveals facts about three-dimensional spatial and temporal variations in stability, moisture, and temperature advection, system motion... and much more. This "backward S" deformation zone stretches between two large vortices located at the red X's in the graphic below. I named this pattern the double cyclonic deformation zone. 

The leading edge of the highest water vapour and cirrus had already passed northeast of Parry Sound, as indicated by the green double-headed arrow of the deformation zone. 

In this case, a large area of very strong convection over Wisconsin formed at the intersection of the surface warm front and the warm conveyor belt. Meteorologists refer to that cyan coloured blob as a Mesoscale Convective System or Complex (MCC).

A single image or better still, an animation of water vapour imagery, could keep me analyzing and diagnosing the information in three and four dimensions for hours, if I let it and if I had the time. The solution to that effort was the knowledge of where and when the severe weather could be found based solely on the actual atmosphere - no numerical simulations or AI.

I was thinking the above thoughts while I painted. Perhaps I should have focused more on my brush strokes. The following collage summarizes some of the steps I took while completing #3024 "Cousin Islands Flags". 

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

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick