Jamie M

nothing in Europe but something in Canada maybe?

I've always assumed that more solar activity would mean a higher temperature in the mesopause so lower NLC activity although I've got nothing to back that up other than hearsay. It doesn't seem to really work for a year like 2014 and 2015 though which both had 28 & 29 days despite 2014 being the maximum for Solar Cycle 24 and 2015 being a 'spotless year'. 2019 also had 281 spotless days although it has lower NLC sightings than 2020 which had 208 spotless days.

Wales radar has had Wales radar has had echoes intermittently from ~0430 UTC to ~1300 UTC with a gap of 2 hours or so I suppose this is one of the 'long echoes' that has been mentioned so might be better odds of seeing NLCs tonight

Always good

Aye although I think the meridional velocity with red would ideally need to be higher into the atmosphere if we want optimal conditions

Aye I agree fully - rather not stay up for bugger all

That's also a bit more promising that NLC sightings are on the horizon at least soon - albeit off on a late start. The Welsh radar which can be hard to pick up echoes at times has seen the first decent echoes so far this year. The fact that it is picking up echoes, as well as OSWIN around the same time, might indicate there is larger scale cooling of the mesopause which means NLC formation is more likely.

Aye. Of course like you say, it's dependant on conditions holding. For precision, it's also whether the clouds form exactly at 13° east although that's just me being a perfectionist which is almost impossible on something like this . That's probably where the OSWIN echoes will come in handy to see if anything has formed and then you can go from there. OSWIN had further weak echoes this morning although velocity doesn't look as best-suited as it could be

https://www.iap-kborn.de/fileadmin/user_upload/MAIN-abteilung/radar/Radars/JuliusruhMF/Plots/jmf_fca_vel24.png Managed to find zonal and meridional velocity. Stefan mentions this on his website (http://www.leuchtende-nachtwolken.info/vorhersage.htm) "Also from IAP is operated Juliusruh MF radar in the north of the island of Rügen. It leads Wind measurements in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. Relevant on the linked side above is the plot at the bottom left, which shows wind direction and wind speed for the height profile of 60 to 100 km, separated for the last 24 hours according to zonal ( west-east ) and meridional component ( north-south ). If a strong south-facing wind ( green and blue color ) blows in the range between 80 and 90 km over a longer period of time, there is a chance, the particularly cold air masses are brought in from the north, which could produce an NLC-like location. So this is different from that OSWIN measurementsno direct proof of NLCs, but only an indication of favorable conditions in the Mesopause region. Are e.g. observed in one night on the Baltic Sea NLCs and the following day there is a permanent strong south current in the decisive altitude, this is an indicator, that NLCs can also be expected the following night, especially if OSWIN also displays MSEs.") It looks like we might be able to work out at least the conditions here if they are conducive to form. Ideally, we'd want a positive meridional velocity and a negative zonal velocity for conducive NLC conditions for them to form. You can see this today with deep blue from 0600 to now between 80 & 90 km for zonal velocity although meridional velocity could be stronger. I presume we can use this along with MSES on OSWIN to try and see if there are conducive conditions for NLCs to possibly appear.

In the most ideal scenario, We want strong long-lasting echoes that continue until 20:00 BST or longer on OSWIN That does fit @mushymanrob's theory on wanting the echoes over the radar's location at 1900 UTC somewhat. Think we'd need the wind speed/direction higher up in the meso to try and figure out exactly how far these clouds are going in an hour or so to get something more precise

Looking through some of the stats here from Stefan's website (http://www.leuchtende-nachtwolken.info/vorhersage.htm from 2007 to 2022 out of 860 days 82% of NLC nights were preceded by MSEs (radar echoes we're seeing at OSWIN) 62% of visually detectable NLC nights were preceded by MSEs 16% of NLC nights were not preceded by MSEs For late echoes: NLCs were observed 76% of the time with late echoes registered at least until 18 UTC, 83% of the time with strong late echoes Long echoes, lasting for 12 hours with interruptions for a maximum of 3 hours - a lack of data 63 days out of 860: NLCs were observed after 83% of the days with long echoes NLCs were observed after 90% of the days with long and at the same time late or very late echoes (at least until 19 UTC) Also all contained within this PDF altho harder to translate: http://www.leuchtende-nachtwolken.info/oswin.pdf

Aye although it's convincing to see greater echoes starting to appear. Worth keeping an eye out anyway

LOVELYY

For e.g. on the 5th July last year: Hello everyone, OSWIN has been receiving partly strong echoes from the mesosphere since noon until shortly before 19:00 UT (21:00 CEST) (https://www.iap-kborn.de/fileadmin/user ... _4hour.png, expires), which dropped from initially 85 km to 82 km. In the afternoon NERC also responded for a short time (http://www.mstrf.eclipse.co.uk/ncas-cda ... s_m300.png, expires). The high-altitude winds changed direction several times during the course of the day (https://www.iap-kborn.de/fileadmin/user ... _vel24.png, expires) without this being able to be correlated with the course of the echoes. The statistical odds (p.http://www.glühende-nachtwolken.info/ ... .htm#oswin) that at some point somewhere in the D/A/CH region NLCs can be sighted, at least with technical aids (binoculars, camera, webcam) are at least 80%, whereby bright and extended displays are possible, definitely already in the evening sector. Greetings from Oberursel, Stefan

SOUSY is a lower resolution than MAARSY and they both show radar echoes that can be associated with the clouds or not. MAARSY in my understanding is more likely to show any very small trace of echoes that could be associated with NLCs whilst that of SOUSY and the OSWIN radar are more likely to show solid and possibly stronger echoes first instead of the much weaker stuff that's seen on MAARSY if you get what I mean in that regards. Believe those on the German forum tend to use the OSWIN radar echoes that happen before nightfall to try and forecast whether there could be NLCs or not

More detection on SOUSY Think MAARSY is incredibly sensitive in how it detects these echoes hence why it can show deep red and have nada show up. It does seem easier to detect nothing than something as every radar being void of anything is a good indicator. Anyway away from my tangent, I'd be more likely to say nothing based off MAARSY having absolutely nothing due to its sensitive nature of detecting these radar echoes.

Crippling levels of high tropospheric cloud

Nil once again outside I see one of the other radars (ESRAD) is starting to show some weak echos too.

Perfect clear skies and nothing

Aye it's just luck whether they amount to anything whilst on DAISY you could properly see the clouds forming and where they were There's a neat PDF I've found here on the website I linked earlier that has got OSWIN echoes linked with NLC sightings http://www.leuchtende-nachtwolken.info/oswin.pdf

Meteor radar observations of polar mesospheric summer echoes over Svalbard AMT.COPERNICUS.ORG Abstract. A 31 MHz meteor radar located in Svalbard was used to observe polar mesospheric echoes (PMSEs) during summer 2020. Data from 19 July were selected for detailed analysis, with a focus on extracting... SOUSY is also mentioned here detecting polar mesospheric echoes which we'd associate with the NLCs like with the OSWIN radar

Vorhersage des Auftretens Leuchtender Nachtwolken WWW.LEUCHTENDE-NACHTWOLKEN.INFO

Believe it's the radar echoes from the clouds

Small detection on SOUSY radar (http://radars.uit.no/sousy/ for info) http://radars.uit.no/sousy6/sousy6_meso-c_img_24hr.png

Will keep an eye on em, added the first one as the second one seems to be down at the minute