Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Cold pool mixout...almost

With yesterday's trough passage, we've removed most but not all of the cold pool that was in place over the Salt Lake Valley.  There is a thin lens of haze remaining over the lowest elevations that appears to be thickest to the north and over the Great Salt Lake.

Photo courtesy www.ocwx.com
The 0000 UTC sounding from yesterday afternoon showed a shallow quasi-isothermal layer below about 830 mb, with well-mixed conditions aloft.


Overnight, the temperatures changed little aloft, but a nocturnal inversion developed with surface temperatures falling to 36F at the base of the sounding.


Thus, it appears that a stable layer persisted over the lowest elevations of the Salt Lake Valley and possibly over the Great Salt Lake.  With a high relative humidity, we're dealing with a fairly obvious haze layer that shows up well in the Olympus Cove weather cam image above.  Perhaps surface heating today will finally dissipate the last of the cold pool, although I suspect something will persist over the Great Salt Lake.

2 comments:

  1. It was very interesting tracking the conditions yesterday. Camera on KSL rooftop showed improved conditions at noon, but it was plain to see that the low points near SLC were not yet mixed. Also note temps in benches were near or above 50 yesterday, not the case at SLC.

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  2. Yeah, this time of year, KSLC may as well be on Mars. It can be so different from the east bench. http://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot.com/2010/12/kslc-another-planet.html

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