Times of the Islands Winter 2018/19

This image explains the concepts of sea breeze and cloud formation.
erally blow from high pressure towards lower pressure,
which during the day is from the ocean to the land. At
night, we normally see the reverse situation—winds blowing
from land out to sea.
One final factor that will play into cloud formation
has to do with the amount of moisture in the air. And
we know based on geographic location that there is an
abundance of moisture in the atmosphere generally at all
times over the Islands.
Now let’s discuss the “hows” of cloud formation.
Clouds are a conglomeration of trillions and trillions of
molecules of water vapor. Generally unseen to the naked
eye, yet felt on the skin as humidity, water vapor once
compacted into large areas reveals itself as clouds.
How is it we see these clouds? In the Caribbean, we
can thank the salt in the ocean for this! In order to see
clouds, we depend on what is called Cloud Condensation
Nuclei, abbreviated as CCN. These are particles of dust,
salt, pollution, and even sand from the Saharan Desert.
Water vapor by nature, will need something to condense
to in order for us to see it visibly. These CCN stick to
water vapor, which is the single most important item we
need for cloud formation. For the Islands, salt water evaporates
off the surface of the ocean and rises into the air
as the CCN needed. However in order to see these as
clouds we need something else to occur.
During the day, as the land heats up and low pressure
develops over the land, the warm air rises in convective
currents off the hot ground into the air above the Islands.
As the winds blow off the water and arrive on land, they
get naturally deflected up as they encounter topography
and the much warmer air that is also rising. As this wind
and air rises, it naturally begins to cool once again. And
as that air cools, it also condenses. Those trillions of
molecules of water vapor become visible as tiny water
droplets. And in mass, they are visible as the fluffy white
clouds we see across the Islands.
If you would like to see this in action on a smaller
scale, boil a pot of water on the stove. As the water boils,
Grand Slam Times Winter 2018_Layout 1 11/14/18 8:36 PM Page 1
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