Thunderhead
While talking on the phone with Northwestern Free Thinker this past afternoon, I snapped a picture of this nice thunderhead. I checked NOAA radar and found that it was about 50 miles away. I'm guessing about 30+ thousand feet high? Maybe 40k? Pilots, help me out.
Labels: pictures, speaking of the weather, Texas
posted by Matt G @ 3:33 AM
9 Comments:
Not a pilot, but:
If you know the temperature, dewpoint and altitude of a weather station near the base of the cloud, you can estimate the height of the cloud base.
Also, if you know the field of view (FOV) of the camera, you can use a little bit of trig.
I ain't flyin into that.
Funny thing: I wasn't the only one to notice that cloud.
But my dinky point-and-shoot through a windshield did me no favors.
That looks quite a bit more than 30k - I'd guess closer to 50k or more.
Hard to say for sure but I'd guess quite a bit more than 30k - maybe as much as 50k
It hadn't got the anvil head yet, so probably below 40,000 feet.
I did a whole bunch of calculations last night about this, documented them all as a 5'8 camera shot from a 6' man(eye level thing). Had the whole thing down to a tee, right here.
Then I reread the post and found the camera shot was about 3.8 ft from inside the car. Crap, started working on the new calcs leaving the old calcs for reference.
Then, the wife calls out "Scotch hour" (only happens when I'm gonna get lucky) and I scrapped the new calcs. In fact, scrapped the whole thing and bounded off for Scotch hour.
Bottom line.
Horizon @ 1850 ft AGA due to earth curvature @ 50 miles. Ceiling 7 times that plus the 1850 which is hidden.
Ceiling, 14,800
Tops I cant recall but you can work it out using 7 even divisions from horizon to Ceiling and interpolating.
It is somewhere in the angels 42ish area, I think. Not much higher as there is no anvil yet. If I wss flying, I'd see about a 200 mile diversion in the direction this came from if more weren't on the way. Been there, won't go there again...
After last night, I'm very tired and late to reading blogs and too tired to recompute. You can understand, no?
Vio condios amigo
:)
Please change AGA to AGL. I was watching the pre season GBPackers vs Chargers while writing my post and wasn't thinking.
Anyway, all my numbers were guesstimated from what I recall. I should have saved them.
It's all based A squared x B squared = C squared. You've heard of this theorem, no?
Now, name it...Lol
S-W - that's the only theorem that I remember by name from my ages-ago geometry class.
Pythagorean theorem!
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