Weather Archive for Sunday, 8/7/05

Exciting weekend of weather inland from our south coast.  Strong lapse rate and Monsoon moisture coupled with light wind enable exciting flight tales.

Saturday saw big development starting early that progressed to thunderstorms.  The mass of clouds grew enough that the feed line bulged south and an east / west convergence set up over near Old Man Mountain.  Diablo went east and got through Lockwood Valley before it ODed, but was eventually shut down at Inyokern but heavy OD (110 miles).  Dean Stratton connected at Old Man Mountain and took the light tailwind at altitude into SB landing at the beach.

Sunday was a drier with the development starting later.  CUs starting to pop about 10:30.  OD and rain over Lockwood Valley by 12:30, but not nearly as much as Saturday.  Cloudbase was a little higher than Saturday.  The Antelope Valley was working better than usual with decent altitudes all the way through.  A classic late summer convergence set up running along the south side of the valley.  It did a 70° turn at the start of Portal Ridge and bridged across the valley to another street on the north side.  The convergence lines weren't static, and shifted around as the day unfolded.  The corner of the well defined convergence on the south side of the Antelope was clipped off as the SW wind started building stronger through Portal Ridge around 2:30.  Heavy development and rain south of Edwards, but that OD blew up and collapsed to blue sky later in the afternoon.  The 4 pm weather was pretty ODed, but by 5:30 the day was relighting for another less robust iteration.

Numerous pilots posted their best something or other.  South Side had his longest flight from Pine in 20 years of flying.  Bo Criss, Dean Stratton, and Mark Stucky all posted their first 100 mile plus flights.  I had my longest tandem.  Diablo did the double header landing at Inyokern 2 days in a row.

The drying trend continued on Monday and Tuesday.