• The satellite image shows a meso- to synoptic scale cloud field of multilayered cloudiness mostly with a sharp edge at the cyclonic side.
• There is a typical relation between this cloud field and the upstream frontal system: the cloud field of the Detached Warm Front can be found separated and downstream from the cloudiness of a classical frontal system.
• Height and thickness contours accompany these configurations with pronounced ridges bound by zones with strong gradients of the isolines (see Key parameters); the Detached Warm Front cloudiness can be found in the eastern downstream branch.
• In the VIS image the cloud field of the Detached Warm Front is white, indicating lower multilayered cloudiness.
• In the IR image the grey shades vary typically between light grey and grey; high pixel values mostly can be found at the cold side of the thickness gradient (leading area of the frontal cloudiness).
• The WV image shows a wide broad anticyclonic curved area with high WV pixel values, indicating high moisture content within the crowding zones surrounding the equivalent thickness ridge.
• A typical area for the occurrence of Detached Warm Fronts is the windward side of the Alps, being accompanied by increased weather events (see Weather events):
  if the Detached Warm Front moves against mountains (for instance in central Europe against the Alps), enhanced cloudiness, Stau Cloudiness, can be found at the windward side (see Stau Cloudiness ), as well as high Lee Cloudiness at the lee side (see Lee Cloudiness ).
• Some features of a life cycle can be observed:
  • Often the cloudiness of the Detached Warm Front moves downstream from a classical Warm Front system and becomes an independent system.
  • Mostly it propagates southward, leading to a movement against the Alps in central Europe.
  • In the case of a Detached Warm Front on the windward side of the Alps a typical feature can be observed if the whole ridge system moves eastward. In this case, that part of the high cloudiness of the Detached Warm Front reaching the eastern edge of the Alps propagates quickly southward while the rest of the cloudiness is still bounded by the mountain chain.
  • During the lifetime high cloudiness is often dissolved so that IR grey shades become darker.

The satellite image at 23.30 UTC shows the cloud band of a Cold Front, from the Azores across Scotland and the northern part of Norway where it changes over to the cloud shield of a Warm Front over Finland and the Baltic Sea. Downstream, from Poland southward as far as Croatia, the satellite image shows a bright cloud field of a Detached Warm Front, which is already separated from the Warm Front Shield mentioned above.

The IR image shows bright grey shades indicative of the initial stage of the life cycle, with the brightest grey shades in the centre and at the leading edge which is nearly in accordance with the description of the ideal situation. The sudden decrease of the pixel values along the leading edge fits to the superimposed jet at approximately 300 hPa. The boundary between white to grey characterizes the jet axis.

The main difference between the IR and the WV image is the anticyclonically curved grey band connecting the classical frontal system with the Detached Warm Front. An interesting and dominant feature in the WV image is the black, dry stripe from the Mediterranean Sea across France and the North Sea nearly up to the west coast of Denmark. It is an indication of the anticyclonic circulation in the upper level ridge.

The whole system has moved rather south-east and the main differences from the 23.30 UTC image are the much warmer cloud tops. At this point of time a clear separation between a part on the windward side of the Alps (Czech Republic, south-east Germany and the northern parts of Austria) and a part east of the Alps (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia) can be recognized. As the Detached Warm Front is influenced by the orography of the Alps, intensified cloudiness on the windward side and high Lee Cloudiness on the lee side (south-east Austria) develops.

The WV image is dominated by the wet air mass from the Baltic to Italy and the anticyclonic spiral from the North Sea to east Germany.

IR and WV images from 6 to 12 UTC (not shown here) show a continuous development of the described features. The VIS image indicates with the white grey shades the intensive cloud layer of the Warm Front. Also in this image the two parts north and south-east of the Alps can be discriminated.