6 Comments

  1. By Dan Ezekiel
    July 2, 2011 at 11:26 pm | permalink

    These are called mammatus (“breast”) clouds. From Wikipedia: “When occurring in cumulonimbus, mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm.”

  2. By Mary Morgan
    July 3, 2011 at 12:31 am | permalink

    Dan, thanks for the terminology. Here’s my next question for your science expertise: What caused the crazy colors we saw tonight? Yellow, orange, ruby – more vivid than I can ever recall.

  3. By Dan Ezekiel
    July 3, 2011 at 10:01 am | permalink

    I don’t have a “scientific” answer, but as a long-time lover and appreciator of sunsets, and I’ve noticed that the most colorful and dramatic ones occur when the setting sun gets under a broad layer of clouds and thus gets a chance to project its colors on the underside of them. Perhaps because the clouds were so rugged and bumpy, there was an extra dimension to the “canvas”. Thunderstorms and sunsets are both inherently colorful, and we seem rarely to see them both at once…..

  4. By cosmonıcan
    July 3, 2011 at 7:18 pm | permalink

    I think the ghosts of JMW Turner & Maxfield Parrish got together to prank us.

  5. By Rod Johnson
    July 4, 2011 at 12:01 am | permalink

    I had the same thought–toward the end especially, it was very Maxwell Parrish, with the layers of rose and gold and blue.

  6. By Steve Radant
    July 5, 2011 at 10:08 am | permalink

    Nothing so highbrow on my mind… HD’s fantastic photo reminded me of the skyscape from a Monty Python animation.