Green Comet

Stratocumulus

Posted on 2013-08-09 by arjaybe

Photo credit – Stu Reynolds

Cloud of the Day – Stratocumulus

Stratocumulus is the gravel of the lower etage.* If meteorology were a landscaper, then it would be spreading stratocumulus all over the place. Stratocumulus is a kind of hybrid between the cumulus clouds, defined by vertical development, and stratus clouds, formed in horizontal layers, or strata. Stratocumulus forms in a layer, with minimal vertical development, but it bunches up a bit, giving it a somewhat cumuliform appearance.

The specific heights of the three etages vary with location, being higher closer to the equator and lower closer to the poles. They also vary with the source of the definition. The ambiguity means I will be using the heights that I learned and worked with. Also it’s going to be in feet, rather than meters. The lower etage goes from ground level to 6,500 feet (all heights above ground.) The middle etage from 6,500 to 20,000 feet. And the upper (high) etage is over 20,000 feet. Stratocumulus lives in the lower etage, meaning the height of its base is below 6,500 feet.

If cumulus are the stars of the lower etage, then stratocumulus are the extras. While fair weather cumulus, towering cumulus and cumulonimbus get all the recognition, stratocumulus remains in the obscurity of ubiquity.

Photo credit: Nicholas_T / Foter / CC BY

* American National Weather Service definition of etages: “By convention, clouds are vertically divided into three etages (levels); low, middle, and high. Each etage is defined by the range of levels at which each type of clouds typically appears.”

The chance of precipitation from stratocumulus is approximately zero.

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cloud of the day, clouds, weather | 8 Comments

Sita Sings the Blues

Posted on 2013-07-30 by arjaybe

Image credit – Nina Paley

Photo credit – Wikimedia

Update: Sita Sings the Blues is available under a CC0 license, equivalent to Public Domain. You should find it and download it and share it and torrent it and do whatever you can to ensure that as many people as possible see it. It’s that good. rjb

While I was writing Green Comet, I happened upon Sita Sings the Blues, an animated movie created by Nina Paley. I enjoyed Sita very much. The animation work and the storytelling are excellent. It’s based on the Indian legend about Sita and Rama and their love. Paley released Sita under a Creative Commons license, the one I’m using for Green Comet: Attribution and ShareAlike. She has since updated the license to CC0, putting the movie in the public domain. As far as she could, anyway.

Photo credit – Wikimedia

The movie includes some great songs by Annette Hanshaw. The music is worth the price of admission by itself. Unfortunately, those recordings are still under copyright and, while they are used legally in Sita, they’re still restricted elsewhere. That’s why Sita Sings the Blues still can’t be completely free, even though its creator wants it to be.

Image credit – Nina Paley

But it’s still free to download and watch, which I encourage you to do. It’s available in smaller sizes of a few hundred megabytes, as well as a full-sized DVD image complete with director’s cut. You can even buy a DVD, if you want.