What are these clouds?
- This topic has 16 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 10 months ago by
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Hi Alexxx, yes, those that look like fibers are cirrus. The small roundish ones are either cirrocumulus or altocumulus. It’s hard to tell from pictures because it’s not clear what the scale is. The rule is (if I remember correctly) if the pinky covers (or almost) the cloud element when the arm is fully extended, it’s cirrocumulus.
My guess from the picture is those are high altocumulus, but not quite cirrocumulus.
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George has it pretty much correct, although I learned it as : When pointing at the clouds, if your index and first two or three fingers cover the clump, it’s altocumulus. Otherwise cirrocumulus.
But you have to look at clouds that are more-or-less overhead. The rule doessn’t work for clouds on the horizon.
In the photos, I personally had a hard time interpreting the super-wide angle shots. However, in the last two, it appears that the cumulus clouds are lower down than the cirrus. So, like George, I would guess altocumulus for the ‘clumpy’ ones.
Clearly cirrus, as George says, for the others.
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It could be a wave system which was triggered downstream of a mountain range but it looks more like an air-mass wave system which develops when different layers in the atmosphere have very different wind speeds and directions….same physics as wind over the ocean.
Were the clouds (which indicate the wave crests) moving or stationary?
If you can give us the location, direction the camera was pointing as well as the time and date, it may be possible to work out from the weather archives what was happening.
Rob
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Jumping in a little late … The wavy clouds on February 2 are stratocumulus undulatus. But what makes them so cool is that above them you have a layer of altostratus of a different shade of gray.
The “tornado” is indeed, like Greg says, a contrail twisted out of shape by winds with different directions and speeds a different altitudes and even within the same layer.
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I am in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. Bunbury would be about as far as New York is from you!
The synoptic chart for the 2nd of Feb is at https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/archives/web_pages/sfc/sfc_archive_maps.php?arcdate=02/02/2021&selmap=2021020215&maptype=print_us
There doesn’t seem to be any weather data for Wildomar but a flick around the nearby weather stations shows the wind at ground level to be all over the place… https://www.wunderground.com/history
The synoptic chart is certainly conducive to winds that change with altitude which could trigger air mass wave systems. But you are also surrounded heaps of mountains which could trigger mountain wave systems.
The wonderful thing about the weather is that no matter how much left brain might you throw at it sometimes you just have to say “Who knows” and switch over to the right brain and enjoy the photo!
Interesting day!
Rob
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What are these fabulous rows of clouds?
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