Interesting Cirrus

[knocker]

Today started off fairly clear with little cloud, just a little Sc which looked as if it was formed by the spreading out of Cu although I didn't observe this. Anyway by late morning Ci started building up and by early afternoon it was very thick and in some quite interesting formations. I took a couple of snaps but it's not easy to do it justice. It shows up very clearly on the Camborne sounding at about 23,000 feet. (Ignore the CAA in the boundary layer ) It's quite interesting to note that 40 years ago this would never have shown up on the sounding as the humidity sensors were poor and neither sensitive enough or quick enough to react. It's why WV content on historical soundings has to be used very carefully.

Edited December 4, 2016 by knocker

[chrisbell-nottheweatherman]

Would I be correct to assume that the Ci shows-up between 400 and 300hPa on that tephigram, Malcolm?

[knocker]

6 minutes ago, chrisbell-nottheweatherman said:

Would I be correct to assume that the Ci shows-up between 400 and 300hPa on that tephigram, Malcolm?

Yes you would be correct Chris. Probably indications a little lower than that, certainly by the time we reach 420mb.

[chrisbell-nottheweatherman]

Just now, knocker said:

Yes you would be correct Chris. Probably indications a little lower than that, certainly by the time we reach 420mb.

Thanks Malcolm - I'm trying to get to the stage of being able to interpret skew-T outputs.