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Redditor alison_bee photographed these bizarre clouds over Birmingham, Alabama. I planned to go with the end of the world as an explanation, but another redditor, claiming to be a meteorologist, explains what’s happening in more scientific terms:
What is happening is that the nocturnal near-surface layers (lowest 50-100m) of the atmosphere are much more stable than the layers above it in the mornings. Until the ground heats up due to daytime heating, the surface layers stay more stable than the air over it. Kelvin-Helmholtz waves occur when the wind shear between the layers destabilizes the topmost portion of that stable layer, and entrains the air into the unstable layer. What you see is stable air being lifted, cooled, and condensed so that this process becomes visible, though this commonly happens many places without being visible.
I’d also like to note that this is different from gravity waves as stated elsewhere as these are completely shear induced while gravity waves are usually from lifting buoyant air into a stable region and gravity pulling that air back down. When that air is pulled back down, it can overshoot it’s location of being stable, and a wave pattern forms.
Link -via Geekosystem (where there’s a video)
Esther Havens snapped this marvelous shot in Ethiopia. NASA says that it’s a pileus iridescent cloud, which is “a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts.” Translation: the sky gods are happy and demand fewer virgin sacrifices this year.
Link -via Geekologie | Artist’s Website
The above video was recently shot at Hietaniemi Beach in southern Finland. It shows dark storm clouds gathering so quickly that people on the beach start screaming in terror (1:04). The last twenty seconds are particularly impressive.
via Super Punch
Stormchasers Chad Cowan and Jenna Blum found this beautiful tempest in July. Perhaps you heard about the giant hail stones it produced- one measuring 8″ in diameter, and weighing almost two pounds!
via kottke
Artist Ron English took skywriting to a whole new level when he wrote the word “cloud” five times over Manhattan and let the words slowly become clouds. Lest you think Mr. English is one of those “artists” who thinks doing something a little strange makes you an artist, I suggest you view the gallery on his website –just a warning though, some of his paintings may not be SFW.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Photo: Mark Gallagher
Resembling something out of Independence Day, or the arrival of Cthulu, Mammatus Clouds are a meteorological phenomenon caused by sagging cellular accumulations produced in clouds of ice and water, and usually mean a fierce storm is trying to develop.
Tending to form in warmer months over the Midwest and eastern areas of the US, mammatus are nonetheless found elsewhere, as our chase across the States to track this singular meteorological phenomenon will reveal.
The above photograph was taken in Colorado, but Environmental Graffiti has a bunch of cool examples. The one from Tornado Alley state Oklahoma is particularly ominous.
Photo: Wikipedia by NOAA
