First Alert Weather In-Depth: Grey sky streak

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Wednesday marks three days in a row of overcast skies in the ROC. The question is: What causes this and what will change it?

The clouds are beginning to break up to the south. Here’s what’s going on: We can kind of turn the atmosphere on its side to give you a better idea. A red line represents a cross-section of the atmosphere and this is the temperature climbing as we go in height. It usually gets a little bit cooler as we go up through the atmosphere, but something different happens the temperature actually goes the other way so it gets a little bit warmer.

When that happens we get what is called an inversion in the temperature. The inversion and is right there and at the point that we start to get some of this moisture that gets trapped.

So we need to get some kind of mixing to take place. So this is going to be the big question. When do we get some mixing? And when do we get some of the dryer air coming down to the surface?