Daily Summary for 7 November 2006

With a split flow scenario, the major weather systems in play over eastern North America were a deep low over the northernmost tip of Quebec and a weaker system over the Southeast US. The storm over the Southeast advanced northward during the day, providing precipitation for CARE and southwestern Ontario. Nearer to Ottawa and the CloudSat overpass, conditions were mixed. The system over Northern Quebec provided mid-level clouds, while the system to the south brought in clouds at multiple layers: cirrus, altostratus, and nimbostratus.

Pictures taken during the flight by Adam Kankiewicz:

Today's C3VP flight turned out to be a mixed bag of clouds. We went north out of Ottawa and initially found a great looking mixed phase deck of clouds. After heading north along the CloudSat track and swinging back around to the south the deck of mid-level clouds started dissipating rapidly. By CloudSat overpass time (~13:30 LT) only a few scattered clouds at different layers were left. We had a thick layer of partially visible cirrus present over us the entire time. After C3VP ops were finished, we headed east out of the C3VP target region looking for some better mixed-phase clouds (as observed on the uploaded satellite images!). After heading east for about 25 minutes we found the best looking clouds around and were able to run a porpoising leg through the top followed by a spiral sounding through the cloud. Cloud top had peak lwc of ~0.15 g/m3. This cloud (like all the other clouds we observed today) dissipated right before our eyes. We then decided to call it a day and head home. We used about 1.5 hrs of flight time. It was a very frustrating midlevel cloud case.

Lessons learned:

This was the first time we have tried anything outside the C3VP ops region and we had excellent cooperation from Montreal ATC. Vertical blocks and sounding requests were quickly approved. The scattered nature of the clouds prevented any meaningful Lagrangian sampling attempts. If CLEX cloud conditions look favorable, we need to try to arrive early on a C3VP track to take advantage of the clouds before they disappear. Kevin's lidar proved to be very useful for identifying targetable liquid cloud layers.

Below is a MODIS IR image and CloudSat swath during the C3VP/CLEX flight.

Images are every 4 hours beginning at 0045 UTC.