(meteorobs) OT Spectacular Mammatus Clouds

Robert Gardner rendrag at earthlink.net
Sat Oct 8 19:32:05 EDT 2005


There must be a fair amount of thermal updraft associated with mammatus 
or mammatocumulus clouds. A couple years ago the crows at ground level 
in my neighborhood were making quite a fuss. I looked up to see what was 
disturbing them. The cloud cover was all mammatic clouds. Soaring high 
above me was a group of nine ravens. Unlike crows which are very 
gregarious birds, raven usually travel in pairs, but they can't resist 
sharing a good thermal updraft often showing off by tumbling. These were 
all maintaining a flat flight pattern and slowly drifting from east to 
west.

GeoZay at aol.com wrote:

> 
>My uncle referred me to this site. I've never seen  clouds like this and must 
>indeed be rare. Go to the below website...it's worth  the look.
>George Zay
>-----------------
>
>  
>
>>>The clouds are called  Mammatus clouds and there's a link on this URL that 
>>>      
>>>
> tells about them. They do not precede a  tornado, or fortell a storm, but 
>are formed when the air is already saturated  with rain droplets and/or ice 
>crystals and begins to sink.  The worst of  the storm is usually over when these 
>kind of clouds are seen.  They are  quite rare, but really beautiful. <<
>
>_http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/june2004hastings-mammatus.html_ 
>(http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/june2004hastings-mammatus.html) 
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>---
>Mailing list meteorobs
>meteorobs at meteorobs.org
>http://lists.meteorobs.org/mailman/listinfo/meteorobs
>
>
>  
>



More information about the Meteorobs mailing list