We have all spent a fair bit of time looking, looking at the sky, wondering if there is a break in the weather; wondering if storms were forming; wondering if it would clear...
So there have been a couple of times this week when looking up was wonderful.
Mammatus clouds.
My friend Lesley sent me these words when she saw this photo on Insta:
"The appearance of mammatus is an indication of the great depth of cloud above and they appear where there are great downthrusts of air and therefore would be expected near the outer edge of the underneath of a cumulo-nimbus..." from her 1943 copy of Cloud Reading for Pilots!
With further reading I have learned that they are oftentimes seen in and around thunderstorm activity; which holds true up here at the moment. The pouches or tubules hang from underneath the main cloud and they take their name from the latin mamma - meaning udder or breast. Which also appears to hold true in this photo.
I will now keep an eye out for them - apparently they are stunning when seen around sunset or sunrise when the sun is low and shines into them more from the side and shows their real roundness.
And then the other night a moon and clouds and sunset combined.
if only my paints yielded such wondrous mixtures of reds and blues ... with just a dab of yellow for good measure
ReplyDeleteand I confess I only learned of mammatus clouds within the past year or so when a local blogger posted a picture ... they are aptly named for sure
It is really really hard to replicate some of Nature's finest colour displays isn't it? I may never see mammatus clouds again but if i do I will know what they are! They stopped me in my tracks when I saw them!
DeleteF - certainly worth looking up - and some great photos to boot. B
ReplyDeleteIts been a good reminder!
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