Sunset Sky
by Karen Slagle
Title
Sunset Sky
Artist
Karen Slagle
Medium
Photograph
Description
The Texas panhandle has some of the most awesome storms and clouds. I captured this stormy sky with mammatus clouds one evening as the sun was setting.
Mammatus are most often associated with anvil clouds and also severe thunderstorms. They often extend from the base of a cumulonimbus, but may also be found under altostratus, and cirrus clouds, as well as volcanic ash clouds.[4] When occurring in cumulonimbus, mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm. Due to the intensely sheared environment in which mammatus form, aviators are strongly cautioned to avoid cumulonimbus with mammatus as they indicate convectively induced turbulence.[5] Contrails may also produce lobes but these are incorrectly termed as mammatus.[1]
Mammatus may appear as smooth, ragged or lumpy lobes and may be opaque or translucent. Because mammatus occur as a grouping of lobes, the way they clump together can vary from an isolated cluster to a field of mammae that spread over hundreds of kilometers to being organized along a line, and may be composed of either unequal or similarly-sized lobes. The individual mammatus lobe average diameters of 1–3 kilometres (0.6–1.9 mi) and lengths on average of 1⁄2 kilometre (0.3 mi). A lobe can last an average of 10 minutes, but a whole cluster of mamma can range from 15 minutes to a few hours. They are usually composed of ice, but also can be a mixture of ice and liquid water or be composed of almost entirely liquid water.
True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system. Typically composed primarily of ice, they can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and individual formations can remain visibly static for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers - appearing around, before or even after severe weather.
Uploaded
May 7th, 2023
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