Weather Blog #15

Today was extremely warm! We had clear skies in the morning, but as the day progressed we saw more and more clouds until finally around sunset the cloud was about 80% covered with stratus clouds. I believe that I was watching a warm front approaching-which means that we should see precipitation soon. When a warm front approaches, it gets warmer (obviously) which happened today, also it begins with cirrus clouds, then cirrostratus then altocirrus then stratus (which is what we saw around 7pm) then nimbostratus-which should appear by tomorrow. Also, we were recieving winds from the south-and usually when wind direction is anywhere from northeast to south you can expect precipitation within the next day.

THURSDAY

I was correct in predicting that the weather will continue to get cooler, and also in expecting our barometric pressure to rise! We have broken clouds today-and many different types! It looks like there are some altocumulus clouds, and some cirrus clouds. Although this wind map shows winds of only about 10mph coming form the northwest, they picked up as the day went on and by 6pm they had to be at least 25-30mph, and very cold!

The east coast is getting a storm today. I believe it is from the same system that caused it to rain here the other day. As the storm moved towards the east, it started receiving wind from the continental tropical air mass, and since warm air  can hold more moisture that cool air, the storm appears to have grown and it looks like the east coast is getting more precipitation than we did.

WEDNESDAY

Today is cold and rainy. We were correct in predicting that it would rain today! We have 100% cloud cover-nimbostratus clouds. We also have a cold front moving through and winds from the south/southwest at about 10 mph. As soon as the cold front passes through we will see a shift in wind direction because there is a high pressure system located to the northwest of us. This means that our winds will shift to northwest winds and it will continue to cool down because we will be receiving air from the continental polar air mass. Also, when our winds change we should expect clearing conditions because there are no clouds to our northwest. We can also expect our barometric pressure to start rising because we will be receiving air molecules that are trying to even out the high/low pressure discrepancies, therefore our pressure will increase.

TUESDAY

Today we have some interesting weather going on. We have cirrus clouds and winds from the east which means that precipitation is going to come in the next day. I learned that generally when we have winds anywhere from the NE to SE we can expect to see precipitation. Our atmosphere is conditionally unstable right now because the yellow line stays in between the two white lines for a long period of time before crossing over to the left of them. The day was really nice-we had temperatures in at least the 40s, very little wind, and clear skies. It’s too bad I’m busy all day because it would be great to spend some time outside!

MONDAY 

Today was overcast. We had winds at about 10mph from the south.  We are getting winds from the south because there is a high pressure system to our south and a low pressure system to our north west, therefore the winds are rushing from high to low pressure which is why we have winds from the south. Aside from this, there really isn’t much going on in the country right now-a couple of low pressure systems are on the edges of the country-one in the northwest and one out on the east coast.