Inversion

This is a kind of weather we see often. Here we are looking at the Coho, a car ferry, as it exits the Inner Harbour on one of its trips to Port Angeles, hidden beneath that cloud bank on the horizon. Poking up above the clouds are the peaks of the Olympic Peninsula. I'm happy to say that this kind of weather usually stays over there on the other side of the strait. Victoria is relatively flat and it seems these low level clouds either stay on the US side or blow over us to Vancouver where the mountains bring them up short again. That's my personal theory for why Victoria gets so many more hours of sunshine every year than its neighbours. Anyway, this kind of low cloud is called an inversion because it is the opposite (the inverse) of what we normally see - clouds up in the sky and clear air near the ground. On the left of this photo you can see the Ogden Point Breakwater.