Clouds were freaking me out today

[Ralliart]

Hey Ralliart where are those pics from?

Nebraska

[YCL Boy]

Cement Bags were freaking me out today.

Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban
Moscow home last week, while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday

Cloud seeding Russian style.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/ ... 22&sp=true

[FamilyGuy]

Russians have a "history" of dropping stuff from airplanes....

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/animals/holy_cow.htm

[Airflow]

a student of mine called these the "mammary clouds"!

[taylor498]

my contribution...

[sstaurus]

taken early afternoon at work

[Unit 969]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... nauts.html

A giant, anvil-shaped cloud bubbles up towards the Earth's stratosphere, looming over West Africa.

The amazing formation would be invisible to anyone on the ground and would even be obscure from a regular passenger jet since they can reach up to 75,000ft.

But astronauts captured the astonishing picture from hundreds of miles up as they orbited the globe on the International Space Station.

Anvil clouds are formed mostly from ice and normally form in the upper parts of thunderstorms. They get their shape from the fact that rising warm air in thunderstorms expands and spreads out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere.

Streaks of snow are often seen falling out of the edges of anvils. This light snow usually evaporates as it falls through the relatively dry air surrounding the upper part of the thunderstorm.

[Siddley Hawker]

I would seriously not want to tangle assholes with that.

[Tim]

what WOULD you want to tangle assholes with ...wait maybe a wink is sending the wrong message

[Spokes]

According to th e University of Illinois meteorology department website

Sometimes very ominous in appearance, mammatus clouds are harmless and do not mean that a tornado is about to form; a commonly held misconception. In fact, mammatus are usually seen after the worst of a thunderstorm has passed.

Later on on this page though:

Mammatus typically develop on the underside of a thunderstorm's anvil and can be a remarkable sight, especially when sunlight is reflected off of them.

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guide ... th/mm.rxml

According to NOAA:

While associated with thunderstorms, they are not necessarily an indicator of severe weather. Mammatus results from the sinking of moist air into dry air. It is in essence an upside down cloud. The sharp bounday of mammatus is much like the sharp boundary of a rising cumulonimbus cloud before an anvil has formed.

http://www.srh.weather.gov/jetstream/synoptic/mam.htm

From what I can gather from these websites, the particular cell that Mamatus are under would be in the dissapating stage - downdrafts only. However there presence would indicate that local meteorlogical conditions are such that CB activity can be expected. Other cells in the area may still be forming.

While wikipedia is a good place to start, for scientific research I still tend to look for .edu sites. NOAA is a good place to look for information on atmospheric phenomena.

Here is a nice wallpaper

http://photography.nationalgeographic.c ... raphy.html