DEFINED BY A LINEARIZED, QUASI-GEOSTROPHIC MODEL

• Main Author: Stanley L. Rosenthal
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.395.2107; http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/092/mwr-092-12-0578.pdf

This TIROS V photograph shows a reinarkable largescale band of up-slope stralus and frontal cloudiness just east of the Rocky Mountains. The photograph was taken on December 11, 1962, at 1832 GMT (pass 2512, camera I, frame 8) and was received at Point Mugu, Calif. via direct readout. The center-cross fiducial mark is located approximately 80 mi. northeast of Albuquerque, N. Mex. near the crest of the Rockies. North is toward the top of the picture. At the time of this photograph a recent surge of Arctic air had invaded the Great Plains. Midday surface temperatures over Kansas were in the teens, whereas over the western portions of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico they were in the 30’s and low 40’s. The quasi-stationary front separating the two air masses lay north-south along the eastern slope of the Rockies, nearly coincident with the well-defined western edge of the cloud band. At the western edge, the cloudiness was low straliform, lifting and thinning out eastward, and becoming broken middle and upper layers over Kansas and Oklahoma (northeastern quadrant of photograph). The snow-covered higher elevations of the Colorado Rockies appear north and northwest of the center-cross fiducial mark. However, skies in that area were not completely clear; ground observers were reporting variable amounts of thin cirrus, largely invisibIe in this photograph. Thicker cirrus does appear toward the southwest corner. The slightly inferior quality of the lower half of the