"Martin Rowley" wrote in message
...
"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


My thoughts, when I saw the Sc len about 10z this morning, were along the
same lines as yours Martin. I think the cloud height was about 5000ft, the
same level as the sheet of Sc had been earlier. Aircraft descending from the
stack to join the approach for Heathrow were regularly making distrails in
it in this vicinity, so definately not higher than 5000ft. I sent a query to
the Met O about the missing winds. Not one of the UK ascents had winds at
midnight, surely not a financial problem, unless the Met O has forgotten to
renew some licence or other!

--
Bernard Burton
Wokingham, Berkshire, UK.

Satellite images at:
www.woksat.info/wwp.html