Any Real Smart Guys out there care to give us a serious possible
explanation for these effects? - or maybe we need to keep this to
ourselves and let the youngsters figure it out for themselves! Got to
keep a few tricks in our bags, you know, something about age and
experience beating youth and skill...

Here's a hand-wavy guess. Whenever you have differences in the land
surface - like a pond next to solid ground - the heating is gonna be
different. The two differently heated parcels adjacent to each other
will tend to stir the air a bit. This can lead to a very local and
small-scale convergence which can act as the trigger. The bit of
water vapor from the air that was over the pond will help the average
buoyancy of the thermal - but I think the moisture effect is secondary
to the convergence.

I've no data to back this up; just a hunch. But whenever the
convergence has been noticable on a thermic day, that's where the best
thermals are.


Rolf (not a RSG, just guessing)