Shepherd's warning?

Shepherd's warning?

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    • #77883
      Graham Davis avatarGraham Davis
      Participant

      Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.
      Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.


      [I’ve not bothered to tweak this picture apart from reducing the size.]

      This sky occurred on the morning of Friday 13th so one might have been forgiven for expecting the worst. However, although there is some truth in the old weather saw, it was bound to fail on this day. Usually a red sky in the morning is caused by the rising sun lighting the underside of clouds advancing and lowering from the west whilst a red sky in the evening is associated with an upper cloud layer breaking from the west and clearing away. On this occasion, however, frontal rain had been moving east but stalled overnight and had begun moving away westwards.

      Similarly, there is also some truth in the adage that an evening rainbow is a good sign but one in the morning is not.

      A couple of warnings that are true are that one should always carry a camera and, secondly, take a picture as soon as you can, whether or not conditions are ideal. On this occasion, I was on my way to the paper shop and was expecting the scene to improve after a couple of minutes as the cloud moved away from the horizon. As it was, when I left the paper shop, the sun had gone and the cloud was just a grey murk. Great timing on my part! ;-)

      As to the cloud itself, I believe it was Altostratus. The uneven and rather ragged appearance is due to plumes of snow falling falling from the Altocumulus mother-cloud.

    • #77885
      Michael Lerch avatarMichael Lerch
      Participant

      Graham, Nice treatise! I hadn’t heard of the rainbow in the morning jinx. Good catch on the reversal of the warning on the 13th! Funny! But the truth of carrying a camera and taking a pic asap..is self evident. Thanks!

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