Toulouse. But what was this strange cloud observed in the sky of the Pink City?
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
It did not go unnoticed… Tuesday 1uh March 2022, at the end of the day, a cloud to the damn amazing shape intruded into the sky of Toulouse. Halfway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, a funny wave floated over the Pink City.
“It’s a line of altocumulus castellanus”, observes Pascal Boureau
Contacted by Toulouse news, retired forecasting engineer from Météo France Pascal Boureau, specialist in front of the eternal phenomena of the sky, enlightens our lantern a little more: “It is a line ofaltocumulus castellanus. It has a niche shape, hence the name ‘castel’, or castle”.
“This line of clouds occurs when there is a confrontation of air masses. Late Tuesday afternoon, on one side, we had warm air coming up from the Pyrenees to the Toulouse region. , with Autan wind, and on the other, a cold drop over the Bay of Biscay. It was the confrontation of these two air masses that gave these unstable clouds at high altitude”.
Car this “cloud trail in the sky” was revealed at “about 3,500 meters altitude”, continues Pascal Boureau. The specialist specifies that if it strongly resembles it, it is not a vertebrate cirrus, which forms “rather at 7,000 or 8,000 meters above sea level”.
The sign of the initiation of an early spring »
As for knowing what a meteorological point of view of this phenomenon means, he supports: “It is an indication of instability at altitude”.
“These small clouds in crenellated forms, they are drops of water which make like a trail, but do not reach the ground, they are called in meteorology ‘virga’. If this situation occurs in summer, precedes that the formations of cumulonimbus which will give thunderstorms, but in this season, the instability is not sufficient to cause clouds with strong vertical extension”.
This weather phenomenon occurs “from time to time” adds Pascal Boureau, who sees “the beginning of an early spring”. Sign of the times: all the models also converge to say that we are heading towards “a fairly hot and dry spring”, underlines the weather engineer.
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