Tag Archives: Stratosphere

Over the Rainbow, A Smooth Ascent

Flight, Global, Science, , , , ,

We recently took off from IAH in Houston in the morning. DSC07593 I always wish I could identify landmarks on the ground below, but I rarely can.

DSC07599 High above Houston area.

 

DSC07602 As we are climbing to cruising altitude, we see the ground below the clouds.

DSC07605 We are flying next to some clouds above which we will fly.

DSC07614 We we treated to a rainbow from above!

DSC07618 Looking down on the clouds and  small looking ground, perhaps from cruising altitude.

I had expected this flight to be a little rough,  hearing some reports of “weather’, but it was smooth.  The tops of the clouds are smooth, which I associate with smooth flights.  Do you see how dark the sky above is here?  There is less atmosphere to distribute the light, so it looks nearly black.    We are close to the lower edge of the stratosphere above the troposphere.

Clouds In the Air

Experience, , ,

DSC03449 These summertime clouds did not yield rain all summer on the Gulf Coast.  You can see a hint of the stratospheric thin clouds above, which gave us quite an overcast seeming summer, with no rain.

DSC03446 Here you see a similar pattern from a higher altitude, where we are flying above the puffy clouds, but below what I assume are stratospheric clouds.

A commercial pilot told me that they “fly above the weather”.  This would be the case because commercial flights usually fly at the lower edge of the stratosphere, which in the temperate region, is about 6.2 to 8.1 miles in altitude ( 32,700  to 42,800 feet).  An average commercial flight cruising altitude is around 35,000 feet.