Chapter 3 Current Weather Studies

The orientation of the Figure 3 sunset terminator line across North America ________ closely coincide with the sunset-terminator line you drew where sunsets were 6:52 PM CDT (2352Z).

does

The sub-solar point in Figure 3 shows that, at this time of year (the image, 11 SEP 2018), the noontime sun was directly overhead ________.

in the Northern Hemisphere

At 2352Z 11 SEP 2018, the broad swirl of clouds in surrounding Hurricane Florence's eye displayed a brightness of shading in this infrared image that showed those cloud tops to be generally ________. This was also true for the discontinuous blobs of clouds over areas such as Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

"cold"

The shading of those blobs of thunderstorms in the Carolinas and Georgia, as well as those in Hurricane Florence, suggested that those cloud tops extended relatively ________ into the troposphere.

high

If you wished to create a complete 24-hour time-lapse of the cloud patterns across the U.S., such as those routinely seen on television using the satellite images from each hour, you should choose ________ images, because the other type of image would appear black during local nighttime hours.

infrared

The Ohio/Indiana border approximates a north-south line of longitude. The terminator line you drew is roughly ________ to this north-south border line of longitude. This line oflongitude is also roughly approximate to Tallahassee's sunset time for this day, sinceTallahassee is along the terminator. The terminator's orientation relative to north-south longitude lines does, however, change throughout the year.

parallel

The mid-latitude night time widths imply that, during this late summer season, the daylight period is ________ for darkness segments at the same latitude. As the Northern Hemisphere's summer season transitions to fall, future images of this map will show narrower illumination bands and wider darkness portions over the northern latitudes.

slightly longer in the Southern Hemisphere

Cloud conditions, if any existed at this time, are not seen across the eastern quarter of the U.S. and Canada in the image because ________.

the Sun had already set, leaving darkness

Comparatively, the area of clouds located offshore along the southwest California coast that can be seen in the visible Figure 1 image, appeared in the Figure 2 infrared image as a relatively uniform gray shading. Based off of this shading difference, these expanses of offshore cloud tops in the infrared Figure 2 image were relatively ________ than the brighter white cloud tops over Georgia and the Carolinas. These Pacific offshore clouds were not as evident in the infrared image because the tops of these coastal clouds were at lower altitudes and had temperatures similar to that of the water surface.

"warmer"

At the time of the visible satellite image in Figure 1, sunlight was reaching the U.S. from the general direction of ________.

west

Infrared images are basically temperature maps of the land, water, and cloud-top surfaces "seen" by the satellite sensor. Very cold surfaces, such as high cloud tops which emit little infrared radiation, appear ________. Surfaces with intermediate temperatures appear in gray shadings.

bright white

Warm surfaces (water, land during much of the year, and low clouds) appear relatively ________ on infrared images.

dark

Figure 2 is the infrared satellite image for the same time (2352Z on 11 SEP 2018) as the Figure 1 visible image. Compared to the visible image, this infrared image ________ show spotty cloudiness on the U.S. East Coast. Moreover, Hurricane Florence is evident just off-shore as a tightly wound swirl of clouds with a distinct "eye."

does