Roll Cloud! Sort of like Roll Tide but (dare I say???) BETTER!

Happy Sky Watch Friday!! Here's my post!!! (Please visit Tom, Klaus, Sandy and Imac's SKY WATCH BLOG (click here or on the logo to participate) to participate in Sky Watch Fridays. It really is so much fun and interesting to see skies all over the world!!! I highly recommend it!) As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my gtb and I had the exciting pleasure of watching a gust front approach and pass over us yesterday afternoon. With this gust front, at the leading edge, we got to experience an arcus cloud, specifically a roll cloud, which is similar to a shelf cloud which I have posted before, except that they are not attached to the storm.
Unfortunately, I don't have a wide-angle lens, but this thing went on FOREVER, it seemed. It was constantly turmoiled, turning and boiling as it raced toward us and quickly past us.

Arcus Cloud
An arcus cloud is a low, horizontal cloud formation associated with the leading edge of thunderstorm outflow, or occasionally with a cold front even in the absence of thunderstorms. Roll clouds and shelf clouds are the two types of arcus clouds, slight variations in their generation and look being the difference.

Roll Cloud
A roll cloud is a low, horizontal, tube-shaped, and relatively rare type of arcus cloud. They differ from shelf clouds by being completely detached from the thunderstorm base or other cloud features. Roll clouds usually appear to be "rolling" about a horizontal axis. ~source

I mean, this thing was seriously racing by us with incredible "Phelps-like" speed. Occasionally, we would witness little swirlies in the clouds that spun up in the mass rolling little swirlies, but they were short-lived, and super cool!

Now that I've shared the ending, let me go ahead and fill in the details of how it all came about... I awoke yesterday at 4AM, when my weather radio blared information about a tornado watch in my area. That meant it was a day to carry my weather radio, which I had suspected would happen. While my wonderful gtb and I were sharing lunch yesterday, my weather radio went off announcing that the National Weather Service in Tally had issued a significant weather statement for a storm approaching my neck of the woods. Conveniently enough, we were finishing up lunch and directly across the street from a great viewing spot. We could see the storm (literally) rolling in. It was phenomenal, the wind pounding our bodies, rocking the van, howling through the sky and the trees, the racing clouds, whizzing by with unbelievable speed and determination, pounding forward in a sea of turmoil, boiling eastward on its quest for severity... the occasional lightning pulsing south of us. The experience was powerful and invigorating.See the expression on my gtb's face. He LOVED it! Look at the roof of my van, too. You can see the clouds!!! :O) Complete Awesomenewness! Below is a video of the roll cloud. You can see how very cool it was.

Aside from that... let's give a quick look at the tropics. The wave being watched there by the Lesser Antilles has really boosted up convective activity overnight and will likely earn the title of Tropical Depression 6 today. The Hurricane Hunters will be exploring that. Subsequently, this system will likely become Fay, in some form, not Fran as Marshall Seese suggested this morning, incorrectly. Incidentally, I think Marshall Seese is losing it. Behind that in the central Atlantic, we have a broad area of low pressure with very little convection that has a slim shot at development... finally, there is the very convectively abundant (who writes this stuff? Oh, that was me... lol) wave off the coast of Africa that is looking promising for development in GFS runs... Hurricane Gustav (or Hanna) Party at Mikey's end of August!!! jk.

1:30 Update: Apparently, the NHC wants to wait until she's a hurricane before they issue any public information statement... but I'm thinking she'll skip TD and go straight to TS Fay when they wake up... you can click on the image for a link to the current loop.

4:50PM: Special Tropical Disturbance Statement

DATA FROM NOAA AND AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT... ALONG WITH SURFACE OBSERVATIONS AND SATELLITE IMAGERY...INDICATE THAT THE LOW PRESSURE AREA LOCATED OVER THE VIRGIN ISLANDS HAS NOT DEVELOPED INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION.

Have a fabulous day!
~Dewdrop