Rainbow Clouds - Iridescent clouds

Lenticular Clouds - Letterkenny

Noctilucent clouds spotted from Letterkenny on 2017 July 01 at 02:15 am

For the first time in my life, I identified the NLC (Noctilucent clounds) at around 02:15 am local time in Letterkenny on 1st July 2017. I drove towards the outskirts of the town to get a better view free from any obstruction from the city lights and got these beautiful pictures. Night clouds or noctilucent clouds are tenuous cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere. They are the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 kilometres. These clouds can be observed only during local summer months and when the Sun is below the horizon for the observer, but while the clouds are still in sunlight. Noctilucent roughly means night shining in Latin.

Noctilucent clouds are not fully understood and are a recently discovered meteorological phenomenon. For example, during my school days these clouds were not even mentioned among the cloud's classifications in the science text books, and I don't think that they made into the curriculum even now. It may be because of the fact that this recent discovery is not well understood and is only visible in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator. These are becoming increasingly visible, and at times, man made rockets also causes these clouds to appear, and at times due to meteor breaking up in the atmosphere and from it's debris.

You can read more about these clouds in Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

Autumn Sky - Letterkenny

Autumn Sky - Letterkenny

Climbing Above the Clouds

As the flight climbed up to the height from Bangalore International Airport on the way to London Heathrow on a fine morning, the cloud pattern changed their appearance over different layers. Here in the two pictures below, you can see the same layer of cloud from bottom and top. In the first picture you can see two layers of clouds, one below the level of the aircraft and one above, obscuring the sun. The second picture is taken after the flight climbed to some more height and reached farther high from the obscuring layer. But another dispersed layer of cloud is still visible obscuring the sun to a certain extend in the second picture also.

The White Cloud and Blue Lake (Wide Angle)

While driving back to Los Angeles from San Francisco, we found this wonderful white cloud hanging over a lake, just after a couple of hours since we started the journey. The sky was pretty blue as well as the lake. The cloud was snow white and added to the beauty of the location.

The Rain Cloud

The rain clouds popping above the mountain ridge over Pasadena on the summer afternoon was a beautiful scene. These mountains are said to be formed by plate tectonics. The sky turned dramatically red and yellow after the rain by that evening. Unfortunately, the blogger could not capture those images.

Roll Clouds???

Can I call these clouds as roll clouds??? While driving back from Wayanad towards Mysore in the evening through Gundlupetta just after crossing the forest, towards the right side, I got this view. This location is a very beautiful one and is good for film making. The Malayalam film – “Chandranudikkunna Dikkil” was done from somewhere nearby.

Every cloud has a silver lining

Every cloud has a silver lining. I got this picture while driving towards Nandi Hills from Bangalore.

Mammatus Clouds

I am borrowing the description of Mammatus Clouds from APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) website. I am just concluding that the above pictures show Mammatus clouds based on the similarity of the picture hosted in APOD website.

Here goes the description in APOD.

Normal cloud bottoms are flat because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a very specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. After water droplets form that air becomes an opaque cloud. Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm, being seen near the top of an anvil cloud, for example. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side.

Mammatus Clouds Over Mexico Featured in Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)