Nature is Never Spent

We had some incredible mammatus clouds above my city on Thursday. When I went to my car after work, I could see a touch of roiling in the clouds to the north and west. You can just feel when it's going to be special, when it's odd. Instead of driving straight home, I went around on different streets, trying to catch the best view, and of course the entire time, the sky was changing. But in the end, I got the most amazing view when I finally went home.





The next day, a strong, fast moving storm came through and left a lot of leafy branch debris everywhere, a few downed trees and some house damage. I even saw a fifteen-foot young maple tree snapped in half about two feet up its trunk. But my garden plants were all fine. Its amazing what tenderness and suppleness can do sometimes to protect you from breaking in a storm.

( Drops )

Ah, the towering midsummer cumulus. They seem feed on the humidity like great puffy monsters, piling up and up every day and almost never bringing rain. When you have a good view of them, of course, it means that if it's raining, it's raining somewhere else. Yesterday there were a lot of severe, hail-bringing storms... everywhere but here. I saw the entire anvil cloud at sunset, pink and bluegray. Amazing.

Of all the clouds, cirrus make me feel the most lighthearted.

Another storm tried to roll over at dusk; the sky was that weird yellow, maple branches tossing, a hummingbird dodging flying pine needles in the wind. A minute later, not gradually at all, the air was suddenly misty with rain, and it was several moments before the drops were audible.

When I came out of my office to go to class after lunch, the sky made me gasp. The clouds were writhing, swooping, cleaving apart in in eye-shaped holes in a few places to the blue sky and puffy clouds above. There's no way the photos I took with my phone camera can show how astonishing this sky was. The strangest thing was that no one else around was stopped and staring open-mouthed like me.



Halfway across the courtyard, it occurred to me that these might be a newly-named phenomenon I read about a couple of years ago, Asperatus. After looking at the photos, I think it really might be. Exciting day for a cloud spotter! By the time I came out of class, the clouds had broken up and cleared away without incident.

As if that weren't enough, late in the evening, a small raptor flew over my balcony at home, soared across the road, and lighted on the top of a tall lamp post. It stayed there for at least 20 minutes, tearing apart and eating an animal it had carried up there with it. I watched with my binoculars. The rufous-colored underparts combined with what looked like a solid grey back and wings, and dark stripes on the tail, are giving me trouble with identification. Still, interesting sight!

Last night, it rained before and after sunset, and in between, the sky was chaotic and beautiful, with at least three types and five or six varieties of clouds, including cirrostratus undulatus, some ribbony vellum, and possibly cirrocumulus. I love this type of sky, even though it's not peaceful and can drive me to distraction trying to identify the clouds.




By morning, the clouds had cleared. When I looked out my balcony I saw a most unexpected thing floating in the irridescent sunrise haze: a hot air balloon. By enhancing a picture I took with a telephoto lens, I can just tell that it's decorated with diagonal blocks in shades of yellow and red.




To add to the excitement of things in the sky, when I left work in the afternoon, giant, crisp pillars of puffy clouds had built up: cumulus congestus, ahead of some evening storms. Atop one of them I spotted pileus, the combover of clouds, which forms when air is forced up over the top of the cumulus cloud. They're not easy to spot because they form and dissipate so quickly. I tried to get a photo with my camera, but it wasn't good, so here's a beautiful one by another cloudspotter.

(Edited to add:) After storms this evening, the sun came out for just a bit as it was setting, and created a broad, faint rainbow above the pine trees in the east. Hot air balloon and a rainbow? Today has been like a Muppet movie!