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Daily Summary for 7 December 2006

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Weather Summary — Flight Summary — Satellite Images — Surface Observations — Model Analyses — Radiosonde Soundings

Weather Summary

Yesterday's weak low slowly headed toward Labrador, pushing a cold front toward the East Coast. A deep 500mb trough settled over the Great Lakes behind the front, bringing with it the coldest air of the experiment so far. The Gaylord, MI 12 UTC sounding and GOES IR indicated that the lake effect stratocumulus had cloud top temperatures near -25°C. The mid- and upper levels were clear and dry.

Flight Summary

C3VP targeted the CARE site and the nearby ~13:30 LT ascending CloudSat overpass. For CloudSat overpass, the Convair-580 overflew some low clouds along the track and profiled with lidar. The aircraft sampled a nice snow squall with high ice water contents coming off of the Georgian Bay. The squall didn't quite make it to CARE at flight time but low level clouds were sampled over CARE. Jianguo Niu flew for CLEX today. The only potential mixed phase (supercooled water) clouds were seen briefly with lidar during early transit out to the CloudSat point. The thin and intense lidar signal was fleeting and not seen again. No CLEX clouds were sampled in situ.

1815 UTC GOES-12 visible image and CloudSat swath during flight operations courtesy NRL:

Satellite Images

GOES-12 IR courtesy of RAP @ UCAR

GOES-12 Visible (during daylight hours) and Near IR (night) albedo from CIRA.

GOES-12 IR (10.7 µm) brightness temperature from CIRA. The color scale begins at 0 °C with an increment of -10 °C between color changes.

GOES-12 experimental cloud phase from CIRA. Blue represents ice particles, red is liquid droplets above freezing and yellow represents supercooled liquid droplets. Gray areas are clear (no cloud) based on an IR cloud mask.