Observing a precipitating cloud

The atmospheric environmental condition near the Gan Island has been generally dry since I came here. It is expected in such a dry condition that deep convection is suppressed. It is true and we couldn't see many precipitating deep clouds so far. It is not a good new for DYNAMO scientists here in Gan Island because they are waiting for a rainy period associated with the MJO starting. Even in such a dry condition, however, some spontaneous precipitating clouds have been observed. Here I'm going to share my observation of one precipitating clouds.

The S-PolKa radar in my previous post is observing clouds that are inside a circle centered at the radar location and has a 150km radius.

A precipitating clouds near the radar site was found from the radar reflectivity map. You could see it is located SE of the center. The smaller plot shows the vertical structure of the cloud through the yellow line in the large plot. Like this, one can look at horizontal and vertical structure of clouds using radar.

DYNAMO scientists came out of the container (office here) and were taking pictures of the cloud.

The precipitating cloud. You could see rains near the ocean surface.

A closure view on the near surface area. There is a clear distinction between clear and precipitating area.

In my normal like in NYC, I often watch radar maps to make my own forecast in a next couple of hours. But it was a really interesting experience to watch a precipitating cloud from the radar map and my eyes nearly at the same time!