ALPINE, Wyo. — Fireworks weren’t the only reason people turned their attention skyward over the holiday weekend.
On Friday, July 4, Buckrail photographer Nick Sulzer glimpsed these noteworthy clouds hanging over the Palisades Reservoir. The clouds appeared amid scattered thunderstorms in the late afternoon.
National Weather Service Riverton Warning Coordination Meteorologist Lance VandenBoogart confirmed that these photos capture a prime example of mammatus clouds, which are often associated with thunderstorms or severe weather.
The weather service classifies mammatus clouds as cumulonimbus clouds having a “pouch-like appearance,” often seen “hanging from the anvil of a severe thunderstorm.”
According to a NASA blog post from 2007, the signature mammatus blobs are the result of changing droplet temperatures.
“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,” the post reads. “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.”
