Had my head in the clouds


I love clouds. I could photograph them forever with their ever changing forms and colors. There is a wonderful segment in the movie Girl with the Pearl Earring about Vermeer where he asks her what color the clouds are and she first says white then looks again.


Clouds if you are a painter or a photographer are seldom white. But I also like clouds on a more scientific level ever since I first studied weather for a pilot's license. Pilots have to know what certain clouds could mean as regards safe flying or not. The last few weeks of tornadoes, wild fires, and volcanic eruptions have created a plethora of pictures of fantastic clouds and I have been collecting them in my computer files.

This week's focus has been on pyrocumulus clouds. Per Wiki:

A pyrocumulus, or literally fire cloud, is a dense cumuliform cloud associated with fire or volcanic activity. A pyrocumulus is similar dynamically in some ways to a firestorm, and the two phenomena may occur in conjunction with each other. However, one may occur without the other.

Puyehue Eruption in Chile

Puyohoe Volcano blowing
 It is difficult to tell where the ash of the eruption ends and the clouds begin. The colors can be due to the ash in the clouds or as in the latter the glowing embers as well as the sun. the pyrocumulus clouds create their own weather complete with lightning as in the first photo. And with fires they create their own winds which don't help containment at all.

Pyrocumulus cloud created by fire
Wallow Fire pyrocumulus cloud
For more about clouds I recommend Phenomenon of Clouds. But no doubt I will also post more of my favorites here.

Comments

  1. The Blog of BeeJune 12, 2011 at 9:32 AM

    This is a great post and took me back to geography lessons. Great photos to illustrate this blog.

    If you want to know how out of it I am, I did not know until this morning that there had been an eruption in Chile. I have not had time for anything. When R talked to me this morning about the eruption affecting Australia and New Zealand and I looked at him blankly, he sighed and talked to me about my job! I have never felt like this before. Totally overwhelmed!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f
Read more

Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

Image
I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish. Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that. Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trip
Read more