Inverted weather?

Current Sun Image

This morning I went out to start up the motorcycle, and noticed that the whole thing was wet and the gauges and left mirror were fogged up. This is normal for dew to form in the morning, but why was one mirror clear? I had to think about this for a bit, I don't know why because there is an obvious answer. An inversion had set up over night.

An inversion is when temperature increases with height. Here is a "Skew-T" from this morning. A Skew-T is a graphical representation of the temperature profile over a given station.

Skew-T

It so happened that the temperature near the ground reached it's dewpoint (the green line) and at about three and a half feet up, the air was not at it's dewpoint. When a motorcycle is parked the left mirror is lower than the right mirror. This led to the left mirror fogging up and the right mirror staying clear.

Inversions are cool. Here is a picture of an inversion I took from a mountain top while fighting a forest fire in Montana. You can see the smoke trapped under the inversion.

beautiful fire

Inversions set up in the night quite often as the earth radiates the energy that it absorbed throughout the day.

Inversions are characterized by light or no winds, and sometimes fog and smog or even stench. If you have a septic tank or live near a feed lot, you can really tell when there is an inversion over you.

photo courtesy of ateabutnoe

If you watch radar a lot you will sometimes see big circles around radar sites. This is due to an inversion which bends the radar beam down towards the earth. This makes the radar show ground clutter.

By the way I hope people like my new layout

UPPERWEATHER.COM -Meteorological Musings

Inverted weather?

UPPERWEATHER.COM _{-Meteorological Musings}