Just...................whatever [4]

halfwise wrote:

bungobaggins wrote:Interesting how the clouds form to the contour of the island. I wonder how that happens.

You get different convection over land than over water: soil surfaces heat up faster than water surfaces, so you get the cumulus fields we associate with a fair, partly cloudy day.  You can see that the wind is from the east, so the clouds start out small then develop as they move inland. Note also the 'cloud streets': the clouds form in long rolls with spaces in between; this has to do with a strong wind gradient that make clouds 'lean' and so they spill over sideways rather than kill the cloud upwind of them. I have diagrams but would have to pull them out of the ppt I made so can't be arsed to do it right now. The upper level cirrus is not affected by any of this.

Sometimes you'll see lines of clouds just within the coast: this is the seabreeze effect where a circulation is set up between land and ocean, so a line of clouds form at the top of the circulation before it turns back to sea.  Such circulations are destroyed when there is a prevailing wind such as in the ISS picture, but you can see the enhanced clouds limning the east coast of Florida in the image below (sorry about the green boundaries).  Note that because of light winds you get no cloud streets.