Not that it’s a complicated concept, but I thought this was neat. When the sun came up this morning it revealed that the temp and humidity were perfect to have white frost just in the low lying gullies of this ranch I’m working on for a couple weeks. Almost like a contour map or GIS buffer layer from the bottom of the draws.
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Good stuff. Thanks for sharing. I like seeing those microscale differences due to topography.
The extreme version of this is Peter Sinks in northern Utah. They have instrumentation there in the bottom of the bowl and along the upper rim. It can be a 40F difference at times over just a few hundred feet difference in elevation during the morning when it’s clear and calm.
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Soooo beautiful.
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im at the bottom of a slight ridge of mountains along the st john river 100 yrs above me is now z5a im at 4b at the bottom of the 1st drop. the next drop 200yrs away drops down to the river thats now a z3a but was z2b not long ago. the flood flats that are only are only 20ft higher than the river are z3a. i always wondered why the farmers planted those fields last. thought it was because its a flood plain that was last to dry but after understanding the climate zones i realized it was because it was the coldest spot in the region. driving through there after a frost and it looks like the above pics. after a heavy frost i could be mid day before it finally melts there despite the sun hitting it.
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You can really see this in action in valles caldera in New Mexico
The sides of the caldera (miles wide) have evergreens but the bottom is just grass…because it gets too cold for the trees at the bottom!
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There’s an extreme version in Fairbanks too; pretty sure it’s the same phenomenon–temperature inversion. It can be +20 at 1,500 feet here, and -20 in the valley 1,000 feet below. We rented a singlewide down in an extreme cold pocket for 3+ years, and made sure to build in the hills when we got our own place! It has been lower than -60 at our house (800’), but down in North Pole it was in the negative 70s. That was just once, and cold as it ever got since I’ve lived here. It was at the time the third highest atmospheric pressure ever recorded on Earth.
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I live in a valley with strong inversions but 40 degree delta is wild
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