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Interesting Clouds Formations

Posted by John in Topic: General
 

These clouds were stationary for most of the late afternoon and until dusk. Matt from Weatherbus.com has added an excellent explanation of this in the comments.

Clouds

another over the San Jacinto mountain peak…
Clouds 2


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mygif
Matt said,
September 16th, 2007 at 7:40 am

Good Morning -

Nice photos! Thanks for sharing!

The clouds above are nice examples of Lenticular clouds. They are formed from winds coming up a mountain, resulting in the temperature reaching the dew point, since air (normally) cools at is rises, resulting in a cloud. Then, since air has some inertia with it, when it comes down the leeward side of the mountain, it creates waves of air. As the air goes back up each wave, the temperature can reach the dew point again, forming another cloud. Below is a little diagram I created, so you can see this process. The black line is the wind going from left to right.

Lenticular Clouds

You can see this quite nicely in the first photo posted above, as four distinct areas of lenticular clouds, that are fairly evenly spaced can be seen. Also, they tend to stay in the same location because the wave generally stays in the same location.

Matt

mygif
John said,
September 16th, 2007 at 11:16 am

Thanks for that information Matt. Very interesting. Excellent Diagram, explains it perfectly!

mygif
Old Jim said,
September 17th, 2007 at 2:52 am

I also thank you Matt. I had seen the phenomenon over the Pine Nut Mountains outside of Carson City NV but never had an explanation untill now.

Good Photos John.

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