[PotD] Hot days, stormy skies.

[moonvoice]

Last night (at around 7.30pm) was one of the most amazing skies I've ever seen.
It was close to 37C out in Ellenbrook,
and there was a ton of instability / turbulence in the skies,
producing some amazing cloud formations at sunset, as a thunderstorm rolled in.
As a result, almost none of the colours or contrasts have been tweaked inaccurately.
This is pretty much... the real fucking deal.


Mammatus clouds. It was only a small section within the cloudscape, but I've seen more Kelvin Helmholtz clouds out here than I've seen mammatus, so I was really fucking excited.






This is what it looked like, two hours earlier. You can see from some of these photos that there's already some major fucking instability in the system.













At about 7.30pm, when we were heading out to grab something to eat with Putu, I was like 'I NEED TO GET MY CAMERA.' And then I made both Glen and Putu hang out with me while I literally made 'oooooo' and 'ahhhh' and 'holy FUCK look at THAT' noises, and took photos. This was actually the first side of the sky that I saw - the side that the sun was setting on.





This is just a reminder that the colours are close to accurate. It looked like an oil painting.









In the apex of the sky, between the sunset and the hills, the clouds were doing this:





And towards the North, where the thunderstorm was rolling in, the clouds were doing this:









But I actually thought the most interesting part of the sky was actually away from the sun, over the hills. The colours are, again, accurate. Glen thought it was very 'end timey.' Lol. I just thought it was lovely.













The mammatus was pulling apart here.









You can see the mammatus quite clearly off to the right here.













And finally, I turned back, and snapped one more of the clouds as the sun was about to truly disappear.




During dinner, we had delicious lightning strikes to contend with. It was a lovely evening. We were only caught by the edge of the system, it was Chittering and Toodyay etc. that copped the worst of it. But sometimes being on the outer edges of the storm can be even better. The cool winds get flushed out at speed (first cool breeze I've felt in about four days! The rest of the wind has literally felt like what it feels like when you open an oven).

Comments

[stephbg]

Glorious!

[moonvoice]

I wish you had been there! Further West it would have looked so amazing too, but we were so close to the storm system that it was just... amazing in every single direction. You would have loved that (and, I think, appreciated the cool gusts).

[calissa]

I've only known you a short time, but already it has been such an education! I had no idea what mammatus clouds were until a moment ago. I suspect I'll be looking at the sky here with renewed interest. Too bad we have no clouds at all right now...

Gorgeous photos, by the way. Those colours are absolutely divine.

[moonvoice]

Anything by Gavin Pretor-Pinney is great. I particularly like the small handbook because it's hardy, full-colour and travel-sized, but his written works are fantastic and helped me go from like idle cloud-watching to really active, fun cloud-watching. It's also cool to sort of know what some things are, but also just enjoy the sky for being an awesome sky.

I have become really bored of blue skies now. :)

[calissa]

I've already got your recommendation on my wishlist, so thank you! I think I'd really enjoy being able to look up and know what sorts of clouds I am seeing. Even just looking up at a plain blue sky immediately helps me to be more present to the moment and less caught up in my head.

Wishing more cooling winds your way!

[snellosaurus]

The photos really do capture the beauty and strangeness of the clouds and colours last night.

^_^

[moonvoice]

They do, don't they? It was awesome.

[yasaman]

Oh, those photos are stunning! You're right, some of them look like oil paintings.

[moonvoice]

They really do. It had just such a painterly sense to it. I'm hoping to get a bit more efficient at illustrating clouds next year, so these will be great references.

[silverjackal]

You've captured the skies beautifully! We get very similar cloud formations here during summer storms, and sometimes the whole sky is like being under water (like your eleventh photo, and some of the following). I've tried photographing them sometimes, without much success. It's interesting that your part of Australia, like here, would be one of those places where one says "Is that real?" of the sky, because it is so amazing. Other places not so much!

[moonvoice]

Ah, your weather sounds awesome. Northern lights and awesome summer storms? I'm so there! I think I may actually be able to whine about the cold for the first time ever though. Lol.

The Perth skies are pretty epic. I'm sure you know what it's like (though maybe not so much with all the flat elevation). Because the land is so flat, and because there's almost zero pollution (compared to other major cities), and because of where we sit on the planet in general, the skies are just really big and epic anyway. A friend online who came to Australia described Australian skies as 'wide.' That plus the heat in Summer that creates all that extra turbulence in the sky can make for some epic cloud-shots.

I imagine it can be even more amazing up in the northern end of the state.

[silverjackal]

Oh believe me, I know how flat elevations work. I'm high in the foothills, but my work area extends out to the far southeast corner of the province. Flat, flat, *flat* prairie, with rivers that cut deep gorges, and snakes, and pronghorn antelope, and short horned lizards, scorpions, and black widow spiders. Also an incredible diversity of bird life where the prairie is in its' wild, natural state, including salt pans where migrating birds from Alaska and South America pause in their travels. And Ord's Kangaroo Rats in the shifting sand dunes! It's a fascinating place!

There's even a country song about the skies here. The song's not so good in my estimation, but whoever did the video used some good photos of the countryside. From the U.S. side in one case, but close enough!

[endlessbees]

You have sent me into cloud ecstasy. <3

I have never seen mammatus clouds in real life and only one really set of poorly formed KH clouds and I am incredibly jealous right now. Wow, wow, wow. The 17th one is my absolute favourite. Just...wow. Nicely captured.

[moonvoice]

YAY! Cloud ecstasy is a great place to be! :D

First time seeing mammatus! And I kind of had to pinch myself 'is that? Is that? Is that going to be? Oh my god, it is! I think it is!' And I know there are prettier photos and examples of mammus clouds out there, but I'll take what I can get! They just don't seem to form very often in Perth.

The KH... I've been very, very lucky this year. I'm a passenger in a car and not a driver, and that + cloud-watching has simply meant that I've caught the few minutes they've come up. Two have been sort of 'average' examples (maybe three waves?), but one was like, amazing. Like 'oh my god Glen I never thought I'd see this.' Being a car passenger + cloudwatcher = conducive to seeing KH. But also, that being said, I think they form quite easily here (for a rare formation). I think where you are really influences what you see.

[contrarywise]

Wow, those are glorious photos--I'm sure the real thing was totally amazing! Thanks for sharing them!

[moonvoice]

You're welcome! It was so amazing, I wish I could've teleported people into my garden!

[burning_ground]

Oh my God. I really want a three-panel framing of those dark red shots! What serendipity to have access to a camera under all of that. Even lacking a camera I would have been tempted to grab a lawn chair and a beer and just zone. out.

Sorry the weather has been so shitty. At least this is *some* payoff!

[moonvoice]

That dark pink / sinister section of the sky was amazing, and got darker as the sun was just about to sink below the horizon. I wish I'd taken some sharper shots, actually, because I've just noticed that the first photo is a little blurry when it comes to capturing the textures of that wash of dark pink.

[faolchu_rua]

Ditto what burning_ground said. I could stare at that sky for *hours.*

I really hope the heat breaks soon; I wish I could open a portal and transfer some of our December snow over there for you.

[moonvoice]

The sky was only like that for about forty five minutes (with the storm rolling in beforehand), before the sun set. But oh yes, it would've been very nice to have lay down on the grass and just stared up at it.

(Except the ground is so hot in some places right now that it will give you second degree burns if you put skin on it...)

[fox_bard]

Fantastic!

[moonvoice]

Thanks! :D The sky put on a really amazing show. :D

[white_rabbit]

Oh wow, those are *breathtaking*. I could literally stare at clouds moving around for hours, especially when they insist on being so interesting. :)

[moonvoice]

Right? Clouds sometimes just show off and it's like 'yay! Free theatre!'

[smw]

I'll be over here, gawking.

[moonvoice]

It was awesomeness.

[goodbyebird]

*hearts in my eyes*

I was going to comment on how they look like oil paintings, but I see you got around to it yourself ;)

[moonvoice]

Heh, it really did have that sort of oldschool oil painting look to it!

[tulikettu]

O_O

I just...

Wow. WOW.


...


O_O

[moonvoice]

I think I made all those noises and expressions too when I saw it. :D

[kath_ballantyne]

They really are amazing. Skies have always fascinated me. So, so pretty. Though I've very little knowledge of the cloud types.

The colours here are amazing. I wish there had been some way to capture the lightning show we saw the other week. Amazing skies are amazing

[gemfyre]

Holy cow those are spectacular!

Some of them look like backgrounds for those old religious paintings.