Formation of high-level clouds which are definitely of the Cirrus category and were messengers that a low pressure area (refer to second thumbnail) over the Tyrennhian Sea was heading towards us. This was corroborated by swirling clouds in the area as indicated by the visible satellite image on the third thumbnail. Kindly click here for the related cloud photo and weather explanation.

Althaugh the weather sounding on the first thumbnail showed no cloud cover, rime was indicated at altitudes of 550mb and 450mb. Deducing from cloud observation, that is the photographed cloud, the 550mb was discarded as that would have formed mid-level rather than high-level clouds. The 450mb or 6.4km altitude is the lower range of high clouds and that height fits well with the observed cloud that seemed not to be very high in the troposphere. However, both the species and variety of the photographed cirrus is very difficult to deduce exactly as it seemed to fit neither species perfectly according to the rule book. The species ‘uncinus’ was chosen specifically because in the background near the fortices, the clouds seemed to end up with a comma shape, which is unusually large for such species. This comma was noticed to fan outwards from the WNW direction in the area which cooraborated with a WNW wind at altitude of 6.5km blowing at 76kmh. Other species and variety particularly spissatus towards the left could also fit this category of clouds. For illustation purposes, the same cloud taken as a single shot is being included in the fourth thumbnail with the purpose of soliciting further analysis.

Note: The line of bad weather that was near the Bay of Benghazi in Libya produced a localized heavy thunderstorm with very loud lightning strikes over Central and Southern Malta producing 68.4mm in Lija within the space of less than 90 minutes whilst leaving Gozo completely unaffected.