Cloud Types As The Weather Pattern Begins Changing

Good morning bloggers,

The weather over most of the nation has calmed down as fall has finally started.  We have had Major Hurricanes creating Billion Dollar disasters that have set records in various ways the past few weeks.  Hurricane Harvey blasted Texas. Hurricane Irma blasted some of the outer islands and then moved up across Florida after hitting Cuba.  Hurricane Maria practically destroyed Puerto Rico and they are currently in crisis, and it hit some of the islands hard as a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Hurricane season is far from over, and in past active hurricane seasons we have experience the fact that it is not over yet. In the next six plus weeks there will likely be a few more named tropical storms.  But, today, at least the pattern has calmed down as Maria weakened and is now beginning to move away.  Hurricane Lee is harmlessly over the Atlantic Ocean and will also get ejected out as the weather pattern changes.

Something very different started happening just in the past few days, just as the sun set at the North Pole. The cycling pattern that we are about to experience later this fall and through most of 2018 is at its earliest stage of development.  The band of rain this morning on the south side of Kansas City is very different than anything we saw all of this past  year. This  forecast map above shows the weather pattern on October 7th. This is around the time that the old pattern has been wiped out and the new cycling pattern has started. This would not be a very good beginning for Kansas City as a rather broad ridge is forecast for form over a rather large part of North America, but hang on as there will be a lot more too it than just one day. Let’s be patient until the entire picture sets up, the entire pattern cycles through which will take us deep into November.

Sunny The Weather Dog shows us the clouds spreading across the plains this morning. These are altocumulus and altostratus clouds. The base of these clouds, or the ceiling, was around 10,000 to 11,000 feet early today which places the cloud types into the middle cloud category. There may be a few sprinkles from these clouds. They are streaming north from a rather large source of moisture over Texas and New Mexico extending south into Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico.

The clouds will likely be streaming overhead the next two days, but they will gradually be shifting south.  By Monday there will be another cold front approaching with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Between now and then, Kansas City will likely stay dry

This next chart is from the book, “It’s A Sunny Life”. You can order one on Amazon.com and it has this cloud chart and a great section on clouds and weather. The basics of meteorology really begin with clouds and the weather forecaster that masters the cloud types will really begin to become a good weather forecaster as they provide a great insight into what will happen out there.

Now, when is it going to snow? The official 41 Action News Snowflake contest has not started, but you can play the first snowflake game we are playing in the blog over at Weather2020.  And, the first snowflakes that we can confirm anywhere in the KC viewing area will end the contest. This often happens way before the first chance of that inch of snow, but not always. Good luck. You have until midight Friday night to enter.

Have a great day! Thank you for sharing in this Action Blog experience featuring Weather2020 and the Cycling Pattern Hypothesis. Let us know if you have any questions.

Gary

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