Curious Cirrus Get Curiouser

     I love the website of the U.K.-based Cloud Appreciation Society. Where else can you post photographs of Pacific Northwest clouds you don't understand before you go to bed and have your answer by the time you log in the next morning? 
   A few days ago, I posted here a blog titled Ice Comet?, which featured the strange behavior of the cirrus cloud (above) and my attempt to explain what was happening to it. I could not find a match for this particular comet-like cirrus in any of my cloud field guides or online resources. I understand the basics of cirrus formation in the upper atmosphere, but this one didn't fit any progression I had encountered.
     So, I posted my blog on the Cloud Appreciation Society's General Discussion Forum where thousands of cloud lovers around the world chat and share their observations and exquisite photos of clouds. I received this reply from some helpful someone:


A nice piece of observation, Maria, and well recorded. I am not an expert, but happy to offer some thoughts. As you suggest, it is Cirrus uncinus and I would suggest CH1.The RK Pilsbury photo coming closest to yours: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/clouds/ch1/eg2.html
   Yours is unique in my limited experience in having but one cloud, and one with a filament which is both rotating and in unusual directions.
   For CH1, Richard Hamblyn, The Cloud Book, says '... are usually formed when layers of relatively dry air ascend in the upper troposphere, the small amount of vapour then subliming into ice when it meets its subzero dew point...'.
   Thereafter the wind picks up the falling ice crystals and draws them into the filaments. I would hazard a guess that you must have some wind shear around that dew point boundary. 
  I do not know how to beginning thinking about "wind shear around a dew point boundary." The mind fairly boggles. Which is the beauty of clouds.I have sent photos of this cloud onto an actual meteorologist who lived and breathed Pacific Northwest clouds for thirty years.
  I will post his thoughts on this curious cirrus next week. Meanwhile...don't forget to look up.

Ice Comet?

 Last Tuesday, November 2, I stopped by the City of Olympia Public Works complex to return the Zero Waste Event containers I had borrowed and, because there is a pocket park at the edge of the parking lot where I pulled in, decided to stroll through the park, whip out my cell phone, and call my mom on the East Coast.  Luckily, she was in the mood for a good chin wag, so the call went on for quite a while. Thanks to Washington State's new cell phone laws, I could not get back in my car and drive home while talking, so I just kept strolling around the park among the dwarfish statues of construction workers set among the picnic tables.
  And, while I was strolling and chatting and admiring the gorgeous blue sky and fall foliage, a lone cloud appeared (above) to the south at 3:38 p.m. It was a cirrus cloud impersonating a comet--a very slow comet that seemed to not actually be moving. But I kept watching. And watching. And chatting, listening, strolling, and taking pictures of what was happening: as the tufts of this cloud moved across the sky apparently from west to east, the tail, called a fallstreak, changed its orientation to the tufts--from the 2 o'clock position in the photo at top, counterclockwise to the 11 o'clock position in the photo below, and then  to 10 o'clock in the bottom photo.

   It's easy to stroll, and chat, snap a few photos, post them here, and say "cool clouds!" It's much harder to explain exactly what was happening.  I studied this photo sequence and other cirrus clouds from my field guides to try to tell the story here. Here is what I know: Cirrus are the highest clouds, forming most often at altitudes of 16,500-45,000 feet. They are composed of ice crystals. They will form in a clear sky, as they did here. As I understand them, the ice crystals that form in the fast high winds descend into slower, warmer air and lag behind the "front" tuft of the cloud. If the fallstreaks descend through drier/warmer air, they evaporate and decay. If they descend through moister/cooler air, the crystals grow and the streak expands.
   The more I looked at my photos and recalled the movements of the tufts and the streaks, the dizzier I got trying to understand which way was up. From where I was standing near the dwarf with a manhole cover perched jauntily on his yellow hardhat, it appeared that the tuft was moving west to east (right to left in this photo) and that the streaks were moving counterclockwise around the tufts. But I am not sure. The streaks do not look like they are falling--but rising on some invisible current of air.
  I went to the Cloud Appreciation Society Cloud Appreciation Society and looked through 719 photographs of cirrus clouds. All were spectacular, none matched my photos.
   And then I search for images on the Internet. Part way through the 4,160 photos, I came across a cloud that was close to mine on WeatherOnline (below). It captured the spirit of my cloud, but not its singularity,elegance, or cometesque-ness.

    Was my cloud unique or was my perspective "off" somehow? I needed help from my friends at the Cloud Appreciation Society.  Stayed tuned (as we used to say and some still do) for an explanation.

How Much Time to Give a Cloud

   What a glorious day in the sky. I started the morning with a walk (camera and dog in tow) to enjoy the clouds that were not rain clouds (nimbostratus or cumulonimbus) but the lighter more effervescent varieties of stratus, stratocumulus, and later--as the afternoon air warmed--a progression of steadily building cumulus clouds--fractus, humilis, mediocris, and congestus.
 My problem was I didn't know how best to enjoy them today. Should I get out in the rowboat? Should I climb onto my roof? Should I bike to the park near the water tower? Throw and air mattress onto the lawn and just stare and stare? Would I enjoy the clouds more if  were still or rowing, biking,  or walking?
    And for how long? All day would be nice and a suitable time to dedicate to such beauty. What about an hour? Or what about ten minutes every hour all day long?  Today, a lifetime would not have been enough. Look at them! Look at the free show they put on! We all should have left our homes, schools, and offices today and gone outside to watch them, to give them a round of applause, and a standing ovation. Our hands should be raw and stinging from all the clapping the clouds deserved this day. And they were not yet pink or orange. Just white and gray. But what lovely, scrumptious whites and grays.
   I grateful, in awe, and apparently living inside a Mary Oliver poem.
  I am not sure what I thought was going to happen with a full day of cloud worship. Could I love the clouds more than I already do? Will I be uplifted or transformed somehow if I say they beautiful and marvelous over and over like a mantra? Will I get into heaven?
    I knew by noon today that whatever I did today was not going to be enough. The clouds would not get the attention or praise they deserved from me. Of course, the clouds couldn't care less about me or my crush on them. So, resigned, I gave them as much time as I could on a busy day (of doing things not as important as praising clouds.)
   Here is the problem: I cannot give back to the clouds what they give to me. I cannot reciprocate. This is not a two-way street. So, I will gather in their glory, breathe in their beauty, and give it to you.