March 6, 2014

Knowing what we know about clouds after today's lecture I would like to describe the cloud types I saw in the sky walking to class just now. We only had about 1/10 of the sky covered with clouds so coverage is considered scattered. The clouds that were in the sky were wispy and cirrus-like, but they also had some lumpiness to them. Because of this I would consider them cirrocumulus. We also had some cirrostratus in other parts of the sky. Because of this most of the clouds must have consisted of ice crystals or cooled water vapor.

Besides clouds we have wind blowing right now out of the south at 5 miles per hour with gusts up to 10 miles per hour. Pressure is still fairly high, but we have a steep pressure gradient from here to just west of the Dakotas as a low pressure system makes it's way in. The bottom end of this low pressure is a warm front that will be swirling counter clockwise up towards us which is where the forecast for a warm up probably came from. Here is a picture of what I'm talking about.



The jet stream is making a steep trough south of the great lakes all the way to the gulf which is keeping most of the colder air north of us from making its way down. The low pressure system working its way in is bringing a lot of water vapor according to the GOES satellite imagery and caused some scary avalanche warnings over the Sierra and Cascade mountains because of heavy snow building over the less dense snow they've been receiving. Here's a good picture from accuweather.com describing the mountain avalanche factors that are going on right now.