Just a quick musing for you.
The clearance east of this mornings cold front and the subsequent drying of the air mass behind it is picked up superbly in the forecast skew-t diagrams for today.
Skew-T diagrams and charts of height against temperature. The red line to the right is temperature, the blue line to the left is dewpoint. The closer together the lines, the higher the chance of cloud.
These diagrams are produced from the GFS model, but instead of showing you a chart in the horizontal, they show conditions in the vertical.
Both diagrams are for Birmingham.
The first of the diagrams in for 4am this morning and show how close together the dewpoint and temperature were, indicating cloud to 700mb (about 10000ft); this was just as the front was passing overhead.
The second diagram shows the forecast for 4pm this afternoon, 12-hours after the first chart. Notice how the dewpoint and temperature lines are much further apart? The air has become drier behind the cold front, hence the brightening skies and sunshine for this afternoon.
Skew-T’s really do open up a whole new world of forecasting and encourage us to think of the weather happening in 3-D, not just at the surface. They really do shower the weather improving (or deteriorating) as frontal systems affect an area.
You can get the forecast skew-t charts from Weather online at (http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-bin/ ... 4&PERIOD=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) They are updated four times a day at 1am, 7am, 1pm and 7pm.
I hope the above is of interest to you.
Best wishes,
Simon
