effect of altitude on daily weather

[soccerballtux]

City I'm in is about 1k feet elevation. My theory is that this makes the temperature swings more sharp...e.g. cooler at night hotter in day. I get irritated that it can be 55 one day and 85 the next. Is this avoidable? Should I just get over it? 55 in the morning then 85 during the day is also frustrating. Wear jeans in morning burning up during the day.

 

[Gibsons]

Dunno about altitude, but lack of cloud cover (and I guess low humidity) can cause what you're describing.

 

[soccerballtux]

Hm. Well definitely no low humidity problem here heh!!!

 

[wuliheron]

Height can make a huge difference. I lived in Albuquerque NM which is rather unusual even as high altitude places go. Due to the surrounding mountains it would only rain at night. During the day the sun would warm the mesa creating a high pressure cell that kept the rain clouds on the plains out. As the sun set you could drive out the lowest point in the mountain range and watch the clouds spill through one crack.

You might be experiencing a similar phenomenon where the setting sun allows a cold air mass to settle in every night and sometimes the rising sun just isn't enough to drive it out again. The warmer airmass replacing it might also tend to be dryer making it suck less heat from your body. You can see the effect on most mountains as the rising sun causes fog to drift down into the valley and dissipate into the air just above you. There's even one spot at 70,000 feet in the atmosphere that tends to form a 15 foot layer of almost normal sea level air pressure at 70 degrees f. The idea that the air just gets colder and thinner as you go up is a gross simplification.

If drifting fog and pools of fog are common where you live they can produce some spectacular optical illusions. Some are seriously dangerous to drivers, but others are just plain drop dead gorgeous. I once saw my shadow in a pool of fog with what looked like dancing rays of electricity shooting out from it in every direction. Unfortunately I didn't have anyone with me at the time, but if you do supposedly you can't see the effect in anyone else's shadow but your own.

 

[soccerballtux]

that's great thanks.

 

[pm]

I've always thought it was a humidity thing. I live in Fort Collins, Colorado which is at ~5100ft. The east we have the rolling plains with not much of anything blocking the weather going all the way out to Nebraska/Kansas and into Missouri. To the west we have the Rocky Mountains right just to the west of the town and heading up to 14k ft within 30 miles of the city (diagonal, not driving time).

So my hypothesis is that it's based on humidity. In the summer here in Fort Collins, it's gets a bit more humid (nothing a Texan or someone from the South would call humid... but for us dry Coloradoans, 50% relative humidity is pretty high) and when it is ~40-60% rel. humidity, the temperatures stay fairly regular. Nights are warmish, days are warmish. Then in the winter, it's super dry and the temperature is all over the place. Nights are super cold, days can be pretty pleasant. I'm not sure of cause and effect, but it does seem that higher humidity moderates the temperature range.

I grew up in the North Bay area, north of San Francisco in California, and in the summer there the daily temperature fluctuations were amazing. It would be foggy in the morning, and it would be 45F cold and damp, and then the fog would burn off by mid-day and then the temperature would rise to 90F, then by 5pm, you'd watch the fog literally creep down the hills and by 7pm, everything would be foggy and cold again. San Francisco can have some spectacularly bizarre temperature swings from the same effect in the summer. You wake up and it's 45F, and cloudy, and by the afternoon it's in the mid-80's and everyone is sunbathing in Mission Delores park.

 

[Throckmorton]

85 makes you burn up in jeans? Try living in Texas

 

[thescreensavers]

^ +1 Florida too

 

[wuliheron]

85 makes you burn up in jeans? Try living in Texas

Try living in Arkansas or D.C. where the humidity gets as high as the temperature and there isn't a breeze to be found. Even the Mexicans complain.