0030:00z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of USA (click here for 12 hour loop)
I met up with this vortex system in Athens, Ohio yesterday evening and watched it roll in.
It wasn't that windy, it was a tad bit cold, but, for the most part the temperature was very comfortable for this time of year. The edges were very clear and crisp containing mammatus clouds about one quater of a mile from the edge. The only time I have seen this cloud formation before were the early years of heat transfer formations. Those heat transfers were rainless and didn't carry any winds. They were purely a mechanism to move heat from the equator to the Arctic Circle.
The early linear systems running vertical along the east coast of the USA were empty of weather.
I followed up Lower Michigan and the weather was homogenous. A fine rain with no wind, no real water accumulation on the roads, no thunder or lightning. This was and appears to be a heat transfer system and nothing more. An accumulation of water vapor with the sole purpose of moving heat.
0630z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite image of north and west hemisphere
The vortex took on its most definitive form over Texas, a sustained drought area. It literally soaked up heat within its water vapor content and is moving north.
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0130:00z
UNISYS Water Vapor north and west hemisphere (click title to entry - thank you)
I wonder if that will improve the drought. There should be a new monitor map in a few days. Probably on the 15th.
At about mile marker 200 north on Internet 75 in MIchigan the snow was subliming. It was turning from solid snow to water vapor. It was passing right through any liquid stage and becoming water vapor. Where the subliming was dense the fog was very dense. There was very little rain while traveling through the fog.
What does that mean? It means the snow is not running off into local water supplies but entering the humidity heading north. It will effect water supply that relies on spring thaw.
