FOX44 - Burlington / Plattsburgh News, Weather & Sports11.24.11 More Forecasting Frustrations!

11.24.11 More Forecasting Frustrations!

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning and like all other mornings the first thing I did was look outside my window.  It's something I do everyday, partly to see what it's doing out there and mostly because I want to see if my forecast is verifying. 

Today I looked outside my window and was disappointed.  I saw clouds.  I had coffee, ate breakfast, watched some of the Macy's Day Parade, then looked outside again.  Still cloudy.  What's going on?

The day went on and the sun never showed its face.  I expected a partly sunny sky at worst, with high pressure building in and that snow storm exiting.  But I was wrong!

There was this little feature on Wednesday night that I noticed, but didn't take into consideration enough.  Low.  Level.  Moisture. 

Here's what I saw Wednesday night.  This is Bufkit, a tool I use to forecast.  It gives these profiles for Burlington, Plattsburgh, Saranac Lake, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, etc.

That little white area at the bottom of the screen is all that it took to allow these stubborn clouds to stick around the area!  The forecast model here was closing in on low level moisture in the lowest couple of thousand feet.  When the green and red lines are closed together, that is hinting at a saturated layer of air, or a cloud.  I saw all of the dry air above this layer and figured the dry air would mix down to the surface and erode some of those clouds.  That never happened though.  The temperature profile also helped the clouds stick around.  We had:

WARM AIR (less dense)

COOL AIR (more dense)

We had warm air above cool, saturated air.  This made the environment stable.  Stable environments are happy.  Warmer air is lighter than colder air and tends to rise.  But since it is already above cool air, it is in a place it wants to be. The same goes for the cold air too.  So since we had this cool, saturated air mass in the morning, it never mixed with the warm air and the drier air never dried out those pesky low-level clouds.

This was the picture from Lyndon State College in northeast Vermont on Thanksgiving Day around 4 p.m. as light flurries fell in the air. 

This is from the peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, looking to the west (toward Lyndon) at the same time.  Those low and dark clouds were not that deep.  The top of them were below the summit of Mt. Washington, providing a BEAUTIFUL picture here.  There is all the clear sky I was expecting!!

So the forecast is for these low clouds to stick around for a little longer, at least until noon Friday.

This is the forecast for Burlington with the white line showing 8 p.m. Thursday, and time advancing to the left.  The green and red areas typically show where clouds would be.  Notice all that low-level moisture still in place through Friday morning, but deteriorating after about noon Friday.  Still the low-level moisture sticks around Saturday night so I anticipate these low clouds to be more pesky with leaving us than I originally thought Wednesday night. 

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