musings, nature, Photography

Cirrus Clouds

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A couple of days ago, I saw these rather spectacular cirrus clouds, or

horsetails, as I called them when I was a child.

Cirrus clouds are usually very high, between 5 and 25 kilometres (3 – 9 miles) above the ground. They often indicate the arrival of a front, or in the tropics, the possibility of a hurricane. Our weather remained steady (and hot), so these cirrus weren’t indicative of a change – they were fair weather cirrus.

What I found particularly interesting about these clouds was the corkscrew in the center of them. It looked like someone had swirled the clouds with a whisk. That corkscrew shape is also a type of cirrus, but they aren’t usually found together.

Cirrus clouds have been documented on Mars and Jupiter and are also responsible for light halos and winter sundogs.

Cheers from cirrus clouds of the Okanagan Valley. 🙂

30 thoughts on “Cirrus Clouds”

  3. Cheers back to you. The sky with its huge array of different types of clouds is always wonderful and causes me to take a lot of cloud pictures.

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  7. The swirl looks like a portal to another world. Interesting formation. I long for the day our weather gets into a more benign pattern. Tired of heavy thunder showers. At least the hail is staying away from my tomatoes. They had grapefruit sized hail in Spruce Grove, not far away. Allan

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    1. Yes – it does look like that. 🙂 I saw pictures of those hail on the news. It seems like the normal weather for your area has been emphasised. First, fires, and now thunder showers. I used to do a lot of flying in your area, and I always had to watch for thunderhead clouds, but what you’re getting now seems worse.

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  9. I love that little spiral in there! I’ve always been fascinated with clouds. I’ll still spend hours watching them move through when they get really interesting.

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  10. I’ve call them something similar- Mare’s tails. That swirly bit is really neat! I just love clouds. Whenever I’m feeling blah,need inspiration or want to be set to rights, I just look up 🙂 ❤

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