While on expedition in Antarctica, Kit Beuret (Member 63,425) glimpsed delicate towers of Cumulus rising like smoke from a mountain ridge. Antarctica is known as a windy place, but Kit happened to catch these clouds on a windless day by the look of the grease ice on the sea.

As the Sun shone onto the mountainsides, the dark-coloured rock cliffs absorbed the solar radiation and warmed the moist air enough to encourage it to lift from the cliffs in weak thermals. It would have cooled as it rose – enough for some of the moisture it carried to condense into cloudy towers. Fragments of Stratus fractus, the slightly lower wisps of cloud in front of the mountains, would have formed in a similar way as air was drawn in to replace the gentle thermals.