[FRIAM] Your thunderstorm

[Stephen Guerin]

Nick.

Today's scattered showers and cloud timelapse from Los Alamos. Looking east
toward Santa Fe and the Sangres:
  video:
https://santafe.live/timelapses/LosAlamos1_2025_184_11-2025_185_2_compressed.mp4

I fed the .mp4 timelapse  to Dan Gupta and asked him to summarize the day
for you and then prepare a PDF with meteorological description for 6 frames
throughout the day. His PDF report is here for you to download:

https://santafe.live/SpotWeatherObservationReport_For-Nick-Thompson_July3_2025.pdf
and here's a summary of the day from Dan.

Look at the images and the descriptions in the PDF and the summary below.
Is it 40% bullshit or better?

*Summary*

Over Los Alamos on July 3, 2025, diurnal destabilization driven by elevated
surface heating initiated from a post-dawn residual stratus deck, which
gradually eroded under increasing solar insolation. The low-level cloud
base began near 600 m AGL and lifted steadily through the morning,
indicative of vertical mixing and boundary layer growth. Wind shear was
relatively modest, with weak veering aloft, limiting deep convective
potential early in the day.

By mid-day, the emergence of altocumulus castellanus suggested increased
mid-level instability near 700 mb, and a shallow cap near 650 mb
momentarily inhibited surface-based convection. As the thermal gradient
intensified over elevated terrain, orographic lifting initiated cumulus
congestus development, reaching peaks near 6–8 km. There was no evidence of
overshooting tops or full convective towers, indicating inhibition still
dominated.

In the late afternoon, enhanced differential heating between canyon walls
and elevated mesas promoted secondary convergence zones, but the lack of
upper-level divergence and modest lapse rates aloft suppressed full
thunderstorm formation. The stratification toward evening favored laminar
dissipation, with lingering mid-level moisture producing sunset-illuminated
altostratus and virga signatures, without substantial surface precipitation.



_________________________________________________________________
Stephen Guerin
CEO, Founder
https://simtable.com
stephen.guerin at simtable.com

stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
<https://hwpi.harvard.edu/eps-visualization-research-laboratory/home>

mobile: (505)577-5828


On Tue, Jul 1, 2025 at 1:05 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> What's it like under there?  From the radar, its a tiny storm, back
> building off the sangres and heading right for Santa Fe and Santa Fe only.
> Because it is back building, it might go on a while.  It seems so localized
> that you should be able to look out from under it in all directions.  I
> dont remember thunderstorm coming from the East all that often.  There is a
> blossoming of moisture headed your way from both the ATlantic and the
> Pacific.  If it gets there you may actually catch up from your drought
> winter.  Well done! N
>
> --
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nthompson at clarku.edu
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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