Note: You can click on the movie to the right to see a visual of the meteorological process explained in this article.

Once Monday is in the books, I begin to think about the weekend to make the workweek speed by. If the weather forecast is calling for beautiful weekend weather, then the anxiety builds even more. This weekend is going to go on without a hitch. High pressure will dominate and the sun will be in full force.

High pressure has always been praised for bringing out the best in the tranquil side of weather, but why? Picking apart the dynamics of the high in the third dimension will give you all the answers. Air flow in and around the high dictate the calm nature of this large weather system. In the 2D, air flow away and clockwise around the center of the high. These flows illustrate why the east side of a high is cooler then the western flank.

For our purposes, in the vertical (from the ground and up to the sky), air tends to sink under high pressure. Therefore, clouds will not have the ability to grow as much as when air rises. Additionally, clouds and precipitation can be in the domain of the high, if the sinking motion is weak. We call this a "dirty high." On the other hand, if the sinking motion is very strong, then there wont even be a cloud in the sky.

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