What the Commuter Saw : 21st April 2016

After the blue skies and high cirrus of early morning (see earlier post), things steadily clouded over during the morning.  The journey down to the station was enlivened, however, by the fact that the time of year has come for mallards to be choosing bizarre places to think about nesting. Note that she doesn’t entirely trust her male guards to alert her to danger (click on images to see larger versions):

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The sky was still streaked with high cirrus as we swept past St Andrew’s Church, Marks Tey courtesy of Abellio Greater Anglia en-route to Stratford from Colchester.
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…and there was even still a fair amount of blue sky over the oil-seed rape fields as we headed towards Kelvedon, although the cirrus was thickening into bands of cirrostratus:
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Towards Chelmsford, however, a truly weird bank of cloud developed, looming over New Hall School, just east of Chelmsford. It looked as though it couldn’t make up its mind whether to be threatening stratocumulus, pannus or full-blown mamma:
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After Chelmsford, the view south towards Galleywood and Billericay had a sky full of cirrostratus blotting out all signs of blue sky, beneath which were thickening bands of stratocumulus with praecipitatio giving everything beneath a good shower:
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Things just remained grey and damp for the rest of the day…

Author: Richard Lindsay

Having worked for 20 years in the UK statutory nature conservation agencies as Peatland Specialist in the Chief Scientist Team, I then moved to the University of East London where I ran the nature conservation degrees for several years. Now I mainly undertake research and support peatland conservation activities, including the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, within UEL's Sustainability Research Institute. I also paint.

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