Flounder ([info]floundah) wrote in [info]twc_aficionados,
@ 2008-08-14 12:46:00
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Entry tags:clouds, potd

POTD: What is this weird little thingy dingy?


Credit Confession: I took these pictures with a cellphone the evening of Aug. 11 2008. Stop laughing! ;)

The pictures are pretty blurry and have not been modified at all. If anything, there was more color and contrast than you see here. The convection was pretty well defined. I'm curious about that curved 3-d tubular formation that looks almost like a funnel cloud. There was no rotation anywhere else that I could see -- just in that odd little formation near the middle of the picture.



This is the scene taken about a half hour later in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. I could not avoid the wire in the picture. We didn't get any rain or anything out of this, though I think mid-town Manhattan had .75" hail earlier that day.




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[info]quasigeostrophy
2008-08-14 05:47 pm UTC (link)
It looks like a bit of turbulence (looks like an eddy to me), causing entrainment of drier air into the edge region of the cloud, leading to a bit of thinning/evaporation.

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[info]cieldumort
2008-08-14 06:02 pm UTC (link)
+1

Very good explanation of a likely cause.

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[info]quasigeostrophy
2008-08-14 06:03 pm UTC (link)
Thanks. Since I'm studying cloud physics, my advisor would have shot me if I'd not had a decent answer for that. :-)

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[info]cieldumort
2008-08-14 06:05 pm UTC (link)
Well, if all else fails, one can always refer to The HOW, WHY, and WTF *IS* THAT, MATE??? Book of Weather! ;)

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[info]floundah
2008-08-14 07:19 pm UTC (link)
Hey, that's my book!

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[info]floundah
2008-08-14 07:06 pm UTC (link)
Thanks -- a funnel cloud didn't seem very plausible to me either. But it was neat looking.

Tangent: I am stealing that icon!

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[info]quasigeostrophy
2008-08-14 07:16 pm UTC (link)
Feel free! :-)

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[info]floundah
2008-08-14 07:27 pm UTC (link)
Thanks! :)

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[info]leporinis
2008-08-15 07:52 pm UTC (link)
+1 for awesome meteorological-LJ-moniker.

Dann.

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[info]cieldumort
2008-08-14 06:00 pm UTC (link)
Neat pics. The "tubular" feature you spotlight appears to me to be nothing more than cloud fragment of a partial tower that broke off. This kind of thing happens often, but you have to be at the right place at the right time to see them :)

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