“It had rained a few minutes before, and I just looked outside, and I saw these cool-looking clouds,” [Maggie Harrop] told Cowboy State Daily. “And then I saw red from the sunset. I was in awe, and I had to take a picture.”
Harrop managed to get a few photos of the brilliantly colorful clouds before both the light and the clouds disappeared [above Laramie, Wyoming].
Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day said Harrop’s photos are “amazing,” and that she was in the right place at the right time to capture photos of the post-storm clouds.
The clouds themselves weren’t unusual, especially at this time of year, he said. What makes these photos awesome is the timing of the sunset reflecting off them at just the right time.
“Those are called mammatus clouds,” he said. “If you look at those pictures, you’ll see the anvil clouds, those high cirrus clouds on the top of that thunderstorm, and those bulbous clouds right underneath there. That’s exactly where you expect to see mammatus clouds.”
Mammatus clouds are formed by the sinking cold air at the bottom of a thunderstorm cloud. They usually appear as the bulbous, lumpy undersides of anvil clouds, the massive flat-topped cumulonimbus clouds formed by mature thunderstorms.
h/t: Cowboy State Daily
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.