Grand Traverse Yacht Club – Waterlines – April 2014 Issue
Weather Mark By Rob Lovell
With the recent disappearance of Flight 370 being blamed on everything from aliens to a black hole on CNN, I was reminded of an odd experience the crew of Kokomo witnessed in last year’s Tripp cup. Early Thursday morning, with Milwaukee still 15 miles away, the sun was up, the winds were light and what appeared to be a flying saucer appeared on the horizon. Ok, so you’ve been up all night and you’re getting a bit loopy, but seriously, that thing looks like a flying saucer, it’s getting huge and coming right at us. What is going on? Well, what we were witnessing was a nocturnal temperature inversion where the air temperature dropped below that of the water. With cold air above trapping the warm air on the water, we were actually seeing the Lake Express Ferry, beyond the horizon, enlarged, inverted and heading right at us like a flying saucer chasing a 777. It was kind of trippy, but what it was also telling us was, don’t expect gusty conditions until the thermal kicked in and overtook this low level inversion.
Another example of a temperature inversion can occur when the level of cold air is a bit higher in the atmosphere. In this type of inversion, hot and muggy air will rise up, forming clouds, which you then see flattening out below the inversion layer. Without the ability to climb higher, the hot and muggy air at the club can’t rise high enough to generate a thunderstorm and blow out our Wednesday Night Race. Now seriously, a black hole? Everyone knows that if the black hole got close enough to suck up flight 370, it would take all of us with it! No wait, maybe it was a worm hole like the one that captured the Minnow on its three hour tour.