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Old June 23rd 09, 01:23 PM posted to uk.sci.weather
Martin Rowley Martin Rowley is offline
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First recorded activity by Weather-Banter: Jun 2007
Posts: 1,750
Default Cloud formations

"seasend" wrote in message
...
On Jun 23, 11:13 am, "ronaldbutton" wrote:
Strange looking clouds over west Essex now ,look like mountain cloud
but
that is quite rare in Essex !
RonB


Same sort of thing from SE Lincolnshire between 0800 and 0900 this
morning. AC Lenticularis to the South East (probably over NW
Norfolk)
in a light SSE breeze. Not sure I've seen it in these parts without
a
westerly breeze before.



.... similar sort of thing here (West Moors/East Dorset) and I'm still
trying to figure out what was happening. The relevant ascents (all we
have in these cash-strapped times) don't have wind data on them which
doesn't help; I'm not even sure whether they were Sc len/high-base, or
Ac len/low-base. In the end, I reasoned that they were the caps of
embryonic convective cloud (after a Stratus phase first thing), with
some shear-induced wave action smoothing the tops, until the rising
surface temperature caused the condensation level to rise and
evaporative mixing just cleared them away.

But, that could be a load of old baloney! Any one else got thoughts?

Martin.


--
Martin Rowley
West Moors, East Dorset (UK): 17m (56ft) amsl
Lat: 50.82N Long: 01.88W
NGR: SU 082 023