Today there isn't anything too exciting going on in Eau Claire. There is about 90% cloud cover of cumulus humulus clouds, there are also some cirrostratus clouds you can see above them. We have winds coming from the north west which you can see on the wind map below. There is a high pressure cell to our west, which is causing us to be receiving air from the continental tropical air mass. I predict that it will rain later on today or early tomorrow because the air from Ct will contain moisture, also the barometric pressure is dropping which clues me into the fact that we will have precipitation as well. I predict it wont be until after 8 or 9pm though at the earliest.

You can see the east coast is getting hammered by rain storms today. This is due to the low pressure systems moving through which are bringing up air from the Mt air mass-the air mass that seems to always bring with it rain storms because it holds so much moisture and warm air after coming from the gulf of mexico.

Spring Storms!

Today when I woke up it looked as though it would be a beautiful day, but after class some stratus clouds were blanketing the sky, and when I left work early afternoon (about 1pm) there were BEAUTIFUL textbook cumulus clouds in the sky and I knew that we were going to be in for a rainstorm this afternoon! The majority were cumulus congestus and they continued to grow as the afternoon went on. My prediction was that we would get a pretty intense rain storm this afternoon. I was partially right-it did rain, and the black storm clouds made it look like it was going to thunderstorm; however, they blew over us and we only received precipitation.

Here is a picture that I took this afternoon of the cumulus clouds!

Looking out my window, it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day! The sun is shining and the birds are chirping; however, there are some cumulus clouds in the sky which could mean we might be in for yet another rain storm!

Based on this surface map, I can see that we had yet another rain storm move through last night while I was sleeping. You can see the mid-atlantic states are getting hit with a storm that is trailing the cold front from the low pressure system. They might be in for some flooding and severe weather today, as it is currently a stable front. We discussed that when there is a stable front associated with a low pressure system (especially when you can see that there is this much activity from it) that is when severe weather happens because the warm, moist, air keeps filtering into the same area.

We are getting winds from the north which means its less likely that we will be receiving precipitation today because we dont have the warm air feeding in from the south. We are, however, located in a trough that is developing as these low pressure systems move south which means that the temperature will be a cooler than it has been the last week. The air will also be drier because we don't have the humidity from the Ct air mass, but rather the dry air from the Cp air mass-which is fine with me!

Here is a screen shot of the wind map from today. This is a great example of how the winds are moving in relation to the fronts and air masses around the United States. you can see where the two high pressure systems are in the northeast and the northwest because there is little wind there because it is all moving to areas of low pressure. You can see the cold/stable front associated with the mid-atlantic rain storms, and you can see how the wind is moving around the low pressure systems in the south. It's almost better than looking at a surface map because you can visually see all of the movement (when you're viewing it in real time).