Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Is that one wicked moisture front or what? I listened to the flood warnings all night.

UNISYS Water Vapor GOES East Satellite (click here for 12 hour loop)                                   
November 29, 2011             
0330.15z 

It is a little unusal to have all this hot moisture coming up from the equator to form a midlatitude vortex.  Usually there is a mixing of artic air with existing warm air already
over the continent.


November 11, 2011
0330.15z
UNISYS Hemispheric Water Vapor Satellite

The nation was primairly warm as an artic air mass decended over the contient.  The three air masses are easily distinguished in this water vapor image.  The one on the east becoming a vortex, the second in the central part of the country going from south to north and west to east through Canada.  The last of the three is noted to be higher in latitude then the other two.


November 29, 2011                
0100 gmt                               
US Temperature Map              

The current temperature map looks a little different now.


                          November 29., 2011                          
                      1545 gmt                                         
 US Temperature Map
  
The colder air is heavier.  The proper name is DENSER.  Air does not always weigh the same, it depends on its content.  Composition and temperature are part of it.  So the colder air is denser and pushes against the hot rising air from the tropics pushing it out to sea, but, while the 'moisture dense' air from the tropics was over the continent there was some snow where the artic air met the moist tropical air.  The snow occurred at a MOISTURE FRONT.