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So that's a first...an arriving aircraft at CYOW (Ottawa) caused flurries to develop at the airport, and much of the surrounding area by causing a fallstreak hole.
cc: @50ShadesofVan @ensembleator @ScottSKOMO
cc: @50ShadesofVan @ensembleator @ScottSKOMO
Ottawa has a low cloud deck but the boundary layer is deep, mostly saturated with light winds. So we have a deep supercooled cloud deck, with the cloud top temperature above -10C...which means there is very little ice crystals in the cloud. It's almost all supercooled water.
So here's what showed up on radar.
23:45Z
Nothing here.
23:45Z
Nothing here.
00:00Z
00:20Z
00:50Z
01:20Z
01:50Z
When I saw this I commented to my coworker that it looked like someone dropped a rock in a pond.
So it turns out that about an hour before this happened, a Jazz flight from Halifax arrived at the airport.
So it turns out that about an hour before this happened, a Jazz flight from Halifax arrived at the airport.
With the flightpath essentially going either very near or through the area where the snow started.
Now, an hour is a bit long for the Bergeron process to occur (which is how precip usually develops in the extratropics...and usually takes about 30 minutes).
But for sure this was in the path of the arrivals to YOW, so it either took a little bit of extra time, or there could have been another plane.
Regardless, the fact that these flurries started at point and then radiated outwards, with a hole forming made me think that this was a fallstreak hole.
However, that doesn't really fully explain the behaviour...namely the flurries propagating outwards. So I suspect there was something else going on as well. Maybe gravity waves.
But anyway, I thought that was pretty neat.
But anyway, I thought that was pretty neat.
