The end of an all-night operational shift doesn’t have to mean the end of the weather for the day. From the parking lot of the National Weather Center, I saw an old east-to-west contrail maintaining its edges but widening while moving southward. A plane was flying from Memphis to Las Vegas to its immediate north, creating a new, parallel contrail. Both maintained orientation as they advected southward, each filling with a rich cavalcade of transverse waves at different wavelengths. Isn’t it amazing how something simple, even man-made like a contrail, can reveal such intricate details about atmospheric flow happening in otherwise clear air? By the time I got just a few blocks away, they were joined by a sundog (parhelion), and I needed to find a sun-blocking foreground to snag this uncommon and richly textured scene. Look closely at these elements and ponder how complex the flow is all around them, as well as above and below.
Norman OK (13 Jan 22) Looking SE
35.1846, -97.4355