An Unstable Sunrise

This morning's weather was rather interesting, wasn't it? Even before the showers cropped up, I knew something was amiss. There were some very photogenic clouds just before sunrise, as you can tell from the next picture. This cloud and others, however, were convective - i.e. puffy, formed by warm air rising rapidly. This would be more normal in mid- or late afternoon, but not before dawn. Hmm.

The hazy sunrise, also photogenic, was rimmed by clouds that looked like they were of some type of altocumulus and cumulus persuasions if I'm not mistaken. Also a sign of trouble. There were some larger cumulus clouds to the south, and I wondered if we might be in for some rain or thunder in the afternoon. But for the time being, it was all making for some sweet pictures. The third of this next set has a bit too much dead space in the upper left hand corner, in my opinion, but otherwise I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.

After sunrise, I wandered around taking pictures of aster, blissfully unaware of the skies above me.

Then God, in His infinite sense of humor, decided to confirm my prediction of rain a bit early. At first, a light sprinkle started coming down, which confused me because the skies rimming the horizons were blue. But there was a big ugly cloud parked right above me. At this point, I was laughing loudly and uncontrollably to myself in the park. After about 10 or 15 minutes of light shower, it absolutely poured for 5 or 10 more minutes and then stopped. I heard rumbling thunder three times throughout.

Who totally called it? Jeff Renner said there was "a small upper level weather system" moving up from Oregon that brought in all that moisture. I'll wager that it also brought in some cooler upper-level air, thus getting the convection going. Hopefully Cliff Mass will blog about this.

How about all that!