Observations of jet stream: WebCams

LSC Webcam imagery for Monday, 8 Sept 2008. Click here for current animation.

The LSC webcam is in the staff room on the 4th floor of the Vail Building looking southeastward over the campus in summer and eastward towards Burke Mountain in the winter. It's a good way of watching clouds develop, storms pass, and the day go by. You can guess at which direction the jet stream is moving too.

The clouds seen in this video are generally stratocumulus clouds: sometimes they look like puffy cottonballs (cumulus clouds), and sometimes they flatten out into a flat cover (a stratus deck). It looks like they are low, maybe a mile or two above the surface.

Note that even though the wind was relatively calm all day on the ground, they are moving at a good clip due to a strong westerly jet stream, pushing them towards the east. This is the norm in the middle latitudes. Winds usually increase with height in the lower 10 miles of the atmosphere due to the jet stream.