Another interesting satellite image...

[xmetman]

Another interesting satellite image...

[Tudor Hughes]

Yes, very interesting.  The clear areas in the lee of hills are most marked and makes me wish occasionally that I lived somewhere else.  Also the contorted cloud in Cardigan Bay and to the south-west is very difficult to explain.  Also rather puzzling is the fact that the temperature here has been very slowly falling for the last 24 hours and is now 7°C.  With a mild SW'ly flow this can happen in extreme SE England if the flow has come over a cold France but the flow this time is too veered (WSW) for that to be an explanation.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, NE Surrey, 557 ft, 170 m. TQ 352595

[Freddie]

On Saturday, 23 December 2017 19:49:50 UTC, Tudor Hughes wrote:

Yes, very interesting.  The clear areas in the lee of hills are most marked and makes me wish occasionally that I lived somewhere else.

Yes it was most pleasant to the lee of Wales on Saturday.  The temperature inversion marking the top of the cloud was much lower than it had been earlier in the week - I estimated it to be between 2000-2500 feet AMSL.  This was low enough to enable the stratus and stratocumulus to break up through entrainment of warm and dry air from above the inversion being mixed down by the increasing gradient wind.  Sadly none of the warmer air was mixed down towards the ground and we only experienced a 2 degree rise in temperature between the cloud breaking and the early afternoon.  We did have quite a breezy mid and late afternoon, though, as the flow was compressed between inversion and topography.

 Also the contorted cloud in Cardigan Bay and to the south-west is very difficult to explain.

They look suspiciously like ship trails in Cardigan Bay.

 Also rather puzzling is the fact that the temperature here has been very slowly falling for the last 24 hours and is now 7°C.  With a mild SW'ly flow this can happen in extreme SE England if the flow has come over a cold France but the flow this time is too veered (WSW) for that to be an explanation.

I put that down to small scale variations in the airmass.  I saw the same effect here, but it has since reversed.  The sun's too weak to create much in the way of heat input this time of year, and I think it was due to cold (and now warm!)  advection in the inhomogeneous airmass. 

--
Freddie
Fishpool Farm
Hyssington
Powys
296m AMSL
http://www.fishpoolfarmweather.co.uk/
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