>Rob Hawley wrote::
>
>
>I don't know if I would trust the CSC tonight.
>
>My weather sources say that it will likely be a good night again.
>
><http://www.sjaa.net/weather>www.sjaa.net/weather
>
>With the one caveat that I would go for a place that was high. Last
>night there was a definite inversion. The Ft Ord profiler measured
>it at about 1200 feet at sunset raising to about 2000 feet by
>morning. Unfortunelty the easier to interpret GIF generator is not
>working this morning or I would point you toward it.
>
I also use the Fort Ord profiler all the time to judge the presence
and depths of marine layers and inversions.
See
http://www.weather.nps.navy.mil/profiler/profiler_all.html ,
or follow the links on Rob's very useful weather page above.
I mentioned the profiler a couple years ago on TAC, but still find
very few people know about it or check it regularly ( see
http://observers.org/tac.mailing.list/2002/Aug/0060.html for previous
discussion).
The profiler has the major advantage of being real data, updated
hourly, not just predictions. You can easily pick out the presence
and depth of a marine layer by looking for the point where
temperatures rapidly change from cold wet fog to warmer drier air.
(I like the 24 hour graph of vertical Temp at different elevations vs
time, the top graph on the profiler page above)
Unfortunately, it looks like the marine layer has been getting deeper
and deeper over the last 24 hours. The 2000 foot depths reached by
Saturday morning were great for squashing valley lights and darkening
skies at the Peak on Friday night.. However, it looks like the
marine layer thickened steadily during the day Saturday, passing
2800 feet by 5 or 6 pm this afternoon. For comparison the elevation
of our favorite observing areas are about 2600 feet at Henry Coe, and
2800 feet at the Peak. If a 2800 foot marine layer reaches the
observing sites tonight, conditions will end up cold, wet, and
cloudy instead of warm, dry, dark and clear (even on the mountain
tops).
--David Kingsley
Received on Sat Mar 12 20:37:55 2005