--- Jamie Dillon <jamie_dillon@No-Spam> wrote:
>
> That said, for those who haven't been going there multiple times over
> years, you oughta know that Fremont Peak is famous from Oregon down
> to Arizona for the seeing. Has to do with laminar flow and that's all
> I know about the theory.
It partly has to do with a stand-alone mountain and a phenomenon known as
a Taylor Column. When an object on a plain obstructs a laminar airflow,
like the ones we have coming off the Pacific during a typical
high-pressure episode, the tendency of the air is to flow around the
object rather than over it...sort of a "path of least resistance" The
air at the *top* of the object will be very settled and quiet within the
Taylor Column set up by the obstacle, while the air flowing around
continues on a laminar, if somewhat locally curved, pathway. Little or no
turbulence results, and voila! quiet seeing conditions. The fact that
Fremont Peak is also liable to be above the local inversion a good deal of
the time will help as well.
If you pack a bunch of hills/mountains into an area and then try this, the
near-surface flow gets all mixed up and turbulent - under those
circumstances, one must wait for a strong inversion situation and quiet
winds to achieve minimal turbulence and atmospheric (and hopefully
optical) stability.
None of this has much to do with turbulence at higher altitudes, but
that's another story.
Bruce Jensen
Cheers,
Bruce Jensen
~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Received on Thu Oct 20 14:08:18 2005