Saturday 17th September
I guess most members had seen the weather forecast and decided to stay at home so we were somewhat short-handed, so, we pitched in to help Colin position the new generator home over the hole in the ground. On discovering the booked TLs were on their way we decided to make the effort and get winch and a glider out. First launch managed 30 minutes off 2 thermals (2,300' being the highest). After that, more modest times. John T climbed 300' on the edge of a shower while the glider was getting a good washing. Reports of lightening being seen as Graham T and I landed resulted in a tea break being called. An odd cloud formation appeared above the field which Graham T (impressively) as mammatus. Richard went off to explore taking the last flight of the day.
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email exchange about the clouds:
ReplyDeleteSteve B: Tell me more. I wasn't really expecting yesterday to be a flyable day due to the frequency of showers, and when I looked at the radar later I thought it would have all been stopped by early afternoon. Certainly it was a day for interesting clouds.
What was the outcome of the exploration? Mammata are essentially inverted cumuli, with the condensation billowing downwards, so I'd expect loads of sink underneath them and regard them as places not to go. What did you find?
Richard D: Well I got 15 mins from a 1500’ launch though it didn’t seem that long. It was just reduced sink all the way. About 3 to 4 miles to the south there was clearly a very heavy shower with a white core going around to the ground. The interesting thing was that I could see rain at ground level around it but this did not extend up to the cloud. I suspect this was a strong downburst with the rain flowing out from it. I did wonder whether there would be an area of lift around it (inverted thermal) but I didn’t get close enough to investigate. After I landed this shower tracked to the east of the club so we didn’t get wet while putting things away.
Steve’s first flight of the day could well have made use of the updrafts surrounding showers, the winch was certainly getting rained on around this time, so I was a long way from the best flight of the day.
As we finished packing up we had one distinct rumble of thunder and on the way home the A338 got hit by a really heavy shower (I felt the need for front fog lights as well as headlights) so I’m glad we didn’t leave packing up any longer.