Awesome Clouds Fill Northwest Skies During Warm Summer Weekend

Some of the clouds were downright huge!

This top photo took Darlisa Black a full five shots with her cell phone - then she stitched the photos together to create this awesome picture.

She saw this lenticular cloud from her summer weekend vantage point in the Columbia River Gorge in White Salmon, Washington. And she says this cloud was stretching from Mt. Adams all the way to where she could see this shot.

Some of the clouds this weekend were man made, but still really cool.

 This one is of a contrail–left behind by a jet flying in freezing temperatures way above Portland. These are ice clouds and when I saw the light playing off this one I just had to grab the shot! A contrail like this one will eventually evaporate into the surrounding air and vanish.

And sometimes, these man-made contrails collide with natural clouds.

 That was the case in this photo where the contrail slices diagonally across the photo. Sometimes contrails fan out in the upper level winds and look like natural clouds later on but in this case I believe it was a clash of man made and mother nature made!

You’ve probably heard of Mare’s Tails before. It’s the nickname for clouds like these, that look like wispy horse tails.

 But I couldn’t believe I was seeing this cloud street of Mare’s Tails. This…with nothing but blue in the sky above the Portland area. Nice!

And finally, just another example of the seemingly painted on clouds over the northwest on this summer weekend.

 A weak disturbance off the Oregon and Washington Coasts was kicking in little ‘bits’ of moisture and creating a feast for the eyes.

As I watched the skies constantly change this weekend I was thinking, “Wow, I can’t remember seeing so many cool sites like this in a single two day stretch.” Then again, maybe I have a short memory!

 

So did I imagine this weekend was cooler than most in our northwest skies?