Clouds can be a sailor's best friend. Given, you'd have to be an awfully lonely sailor, and probably have to scratch a half dozen unmentionables off the list before you ever got to "clouds", but, ... hey, some modern sailors keep a nice cloud book with them in the navigation room. OK? It helps to whiddle away the hours on a quiet sea spent waiting for the research submersible team to break the surface. Really. Ask anybody.
Anyways, in anticipation of the approaching Tropical Storm Dolly, I trekked down to Corpus Christi Bay around 2pm to see how the cloud cover had changed with the impending storm. When I moved here to Corpus Christi one of the things that impressed me most was the beautiful cloudy skies. That and a two bedroom home for less than 200k. I moved here from LA, where these prices are no longer possible.
The images above show a view of the Bay from a few blocks down my street, and another one downtown. White puffy cumulus clouds lie off to the east over Mustang Island in photos 1 and 2, above. The vertical development indicates warm (darn hot, actually) air rising towards cooler air, where it condenses. Cumulus clouds are associated with good weather. The clouds often associated with the bad weather are below the fold.
The images below, including the one of the skateboarder are looking south-southwest towards Tropical Storm Dolly and Brownsville, about 100 miles away. The sky is a little darker in that direction. But school is opening up to employees tomorrow, so authorities are feeling that Corpus Christi is now safe from danger.
I see some low lying cumulus clouds in the background behind the waves. Theoretically, these should be moving towards the cyclone. At the top of the frame in the photo with the palms it looks like cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are high altitude clouds like those that exit through the "chimney" of a cyclone, and they are considered a sign of an approaching tropical cyclone.
Scleep! I better double check that weather map and make sure Tropical Storm Dolly is heading towards the southwest.
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