Transient cold air drainage down a shallow valley

The small valley is about 270 m wide and 12 m deep with a downvalley slope of 2%–3%. The momentum budget indicates that the flow is driven by the buoyancy deficit of the flow and opposed primarily by the stress divergence while the remaining terms are estimated to be at least an order of magnitude smaller.

This analysis also reveals major difficulties in quantifying such a budget due to uncertainties in the measurements, sensitivity to choice of averaging time, and sensitivity to measurement heights. Wind maxima occur as low as 0.5 m in the downvalley drainage flow-the lowest observational level. The downvalley cold air drainage and wind maxima are frequently disrupted by transient modes that sometimes lead to significant vertical mixing.