RCML-ICUX-009 · visitor question companion
Start with the question you have, then jump into the existing source-backed atlas at the most useful point. This companion does not forecast weather, identify a phenomenon from a photo, or turn observation cues into safety advice.
Good fit
Hard boundary
Question finder
Try fewer words, choose an example above, or open the full atlas. A zero result here means only that this small companion does not have that visitor-question pattern.
No. The atlas has no live weather feed, does not request your location, and does not calculate whether any phenomenon will occur now or later.
Use the atlas to compare observation contexts and evidence limits. For current conditions, forecasts, warnings, or safety decisions, use an official weather service for the place you are in.
Boundary: Unsupported here: current conditions, forecast probability, onset time, duration, local alerts, or hazard severity.
Start with the atlas entries whose visual cues involve rings, bright side-spots, small diffraction rings, or vertical columns. Treat these as candidates to compare, not a photo diagnosis.
Compare the light-source position, apparent size, color order, and cloud or ice context described in each entry before deciding whether one candidate fits better than another.
Boundary: A similar-looking photograph can come from different optical mechanisms; the companion does not identify one from appearance alone.
The atlas separates several bow- and arc-like optical phenomena. Their geometry relative to the Sun, droplets, fog, or ice matters more than the word “rainbow-like.”
Open the candidate entries and compare where the Sun was, whether droplets or fog were present, and where the arc appeared in the sky.
Boundary: The atlas can narrow comparisons; it cannot reconstruct viewing geometry that was not observed or recorded.
It can show three fog mechanisms and the contexts associated with them, but appearance alone is often not enough to determine the mechanism.
Compare overnight surface cooling, movement of moist air over a colder surface, and very cold air over warmer water. Then read each entry’s evidence limit before labeling what you saw.
Boundary: Unsupported here: visibility distance, road safety, burn-off time, or confirmation of fog mechanism from a single image.
Yes. The atlas includes virga as a comparison point for precipitation shafts that fade before reaching the surface.
Open the virga entry and compare the visible streaks, cloud-base context, and evidence limits. The entry does not claim that no precipitation reached the ground anywhere beneath the cloud.
Boundary: Unsupported here: surface rainfall totals, downdraft strength, aviation guidance, or a location-specific hazard assessment.
Those descriptions map to several cloud-form entries already in the atlas. Use the names as a comparison set, then check the surrounding weather and terrain context described by each entry.
Shape is a useful observation cue but not complete evidence. Compare terrain, storm outflow, cloud layer, and formation context before treating a visual resemblance as identification.
Boundary: Unsupported here: wind speed, turbulence at a specific location, storm severity, or certainty from shape alone.
Possibly. The atlas includes several night or twilight phenomena, but “glow in the sky” is too broad to identify one by itself.
Compare whether the feature was tied to a storm, a bright point source, twilight, or a broad high-altitude display. Open the closest candidates and read their evidence limits.
Boundary: Unsupported here: real-time aurora likelihood, lightning tracking, storm distance, or confirmation from a low-information image.
Start with atmospheric mirage and green flash for horizon distortion or brief color near sunrise or sunset. Crepuscular rays are a separate comparison when beams or shadow bands are the main feature.
Record the Sun’s position, the apparent distortion, duration, and whether the effect was a color flash or a broader image displacement before comparing entries.
Boundary: Unsupported here: reconstructing the full temperature profile or proving a brief event from a description with no geometry or timing.
An empty result means none of the atlas’s 24 published entries carry all three selected context tags. It does not mean the selected combination is meteorologically impossible.
Clear one filter and compare the broader set. The filters are compatibility tags for this bounded educational collection, not a sufficient-condition engine.
Boundary: The atlas currently covers 24 entries across 6 broad categories; absence from that set is not evidence of impossibility.
Not reliably in every case. The atlas provides visual cues and formation context, but several entries explicitly warn that appearance alone cannot establish the mechanism.
Use the photo to record shape, scale, light-source position, terrain, cloud context, direction, and approximate time. Then compare candidate entries and open their documentary sources.
Boundary: The companion has no image-analysis or upload feature and does not issue an identification confidence score.
No. The atlas is educational and deliberately excludes live observations, forecasts, radar, alerts, and location-specific hazard guidance.
Use the atlas for learning after you have separated the educational question from the real-time decision. For the decision itself, consult the appropriate official local weather or emergency source.
Boundary: Do not use ICU as the sole basis for severe-weather, aviation, marine, road-visibility, outdoor-exposure, or emergency decisions.
Unknowns companion
A safer reading pattern
This route is a manual-parallel companion to ICUX-009. It preserves the atlas as the authoritative experience for the subject and adds only question routing, interpretation boundaries, and visitor-readable unknowns.
