It’s all a bit cloudy…There have been some interesting clouds in the sky this Summer. No, not those mid-level grey ones, the altostratus, those horrible flat clouds that often bring rain – the other ones, the interesting ones.
Just look at the clouds in the picture – the wispy cirrus high up in the atmosphere, the hazy cirrostratus, the band of low lying stratocumulus over the mountains. I think there may even be a lenticularis forming over one of the mountains. This is the view a couple of miles along the road from our place in Wales, and those are the mountains of Snowdonia in the distance, although in this photograph they are almost incidental - I really only wanted the sky, isn’t it glorious.
Way off to the right you can just see the start of a mackerel sky – cirrocumulus stratiformis undulatus – so called because the clouds look like the patterns of a mackerel’s skin. That’s it below, it looks a little like looking at the sky through that rippled glass that you sometimes see in seventies front doors doesn't it? It’s meant to mean that good weather will continue - let’s hope so, I still have plenty of wall to paint.
Update - The day started wet but soon cleared up and was sunny and warm so we got on with the painting. Looking up I was amazed to see these beautiful Cirrus Flocus high overhead, those tails are trails of falling ice crystals. I forget the painting for a while and just watched them floating high over my head. Well, maybe not floating – that almost forty-five degree angle is caused by incredibly strong, fast winds in the upper atmosphere, the tail-end of Hurricane Bill hits us tonight which may have something to do with it. So a hurricane is coming, no painting tomorrow then. Oh well, it’s still a wonderful life, made even more wonderful by the clouds above our heads.
I should paint this sky with caballa.
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