Firetop

An eleven day gap in blogging deserves an apology, so sorry folks - just been incredibly busy juggling all the duties of a Father, Husband, Employee, Business owner… and Halo 3 addict! One evening last week, after some extremely heavy rainful in Crawley, the drive home to Surrey delivered a stunning sunset which lit up the sky with vibrant pinks and reds. I was listening to the super new Armin Van Buren album which seemed to complement the moment perfectly, and as I hit the A24 at Ockley I looked right and saw the most unusual cloud formation. What resembled huge jellyfish (or enormous alien space craft) were floating across the eastern horizon - I drove home extra quickly to take some photographs before the formation vanished.

I remembered reading about jellyfish clouds in the summer on the Times Online - they are quite rare and reportedly unseen over the UK for at least a decade (Daily Mail). Realising that I may not see this phemomenon (altocumulus castellanus with trailing virga) repeated for some time, I did my best to capture them but the photos don’t really do them justice.

One could see the clouds being forced upwards in a steep curve where they were presumably meeting some kind of warm/cold front. To quote the Times Online “They are formed when warm air laden with water vapour rises in columns and condenses as it gains height and reaches colder air. The strands of cloud that trail from the bottom of the main structure and resemble jellyfish tentacles are formed by rain that reevaporates before it can fall far“.

Technorati Tags: clouds, jellyfish clouds, altocumulus castellanus, weird clouds

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