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Re: (meteorobs) Instant clouds
Kind of a late addition to this thread, but I can remember several occassions
while observing in the Florida Keys, where we could not see any cloud cover at
all overhead (and remember we were meteor observing, and so carefully monitoring
limiting magnitudes throughout the night), and yet suddenly found ourselves
being RAINED ON! This must have been a case of sudden, rapid formation of rain
bearing clouds right overhead, followed by their rapid breakup (before we could
get back out of our cars and look for the offending clouds in the sky). This
happened at least two or three times in a few years.
Other than this, though, I don't recall ever seeing visible cloud formations
suddenly appearing overhead. A number of times in the Everglades, of course,
cumulus would rapidly begin to tower and form thunderstorms, but that's quite a
bit different. Anyway, Wayne, you'd probably want to ignore Southern Florida in
any study of cloud formation: it's likely to throw off all your data curves.
Clear skies,
Lew
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