Beautiful clouds forming in the stratosphere last month due to the near coldest air ever recorded in earth’s atmosphere at 10km above the ground.
Now that is cool. Your picture? Any more?
Taken above the Australian Antarctic base, Mawson.
[quote]Rare cloud spotted
Extreme weather conditions have produced a rare cloud formation over Australia’s Mawson station in Antarctica.
Meteorological officer Renae Baker captured spectacular images of the nacreous clouds, otherwise known as polar stratospheric clouds, late last month.
Reflecting like an airborne mother-of-pearl shell, the cloud colours are produced when fading light at sunset passes through water-ice crystals blown along a strong jet of stratospheric air more than 10 kilometres above the ground.
A weather balloon measured temperatures down to minus 87 degrees when the photographs were taken.
“That’s about as cold as the lowest temperatures ever recorded on the surface of the Earth,” Ms Baker said.
“Amazingly, the winds at this height were blowing at nearly 230 kilometres per hour.”
Australian Antarctic Division atmospheric scientist Andrew Klekociuk said the clouds were seldom seen but could have long-ranging effects.
“These clouds are more than just a curiosity,” he said.
“They reveal extreme conditions in the atmosphere and promote chemical changes that lead to destruction of vital stratospheric ozone.”[/quote]
HG
An interesting side effect of global warming!
An interesting side effect of global warming![/quote]
Global warming is evil cult.
Check out the cloud appreciation society webpage. Some surreal cloud images. You can hardly believe these formations are real (especially the UFO clouds). But then you start to open your eyes and see a lot of strange stuff in the skies.
Best skies I ever saw were up in the Yukon. Shafts of light were always descending from the clouds like Jesus wanted to have a chat with you. Double rainbows all the time too. Such a big sky you could see showers and lightning in the distance while it was clear overhead.
Do they have magic mushrooms up there in the Yukon? 
HG
Do they have magic mushrooms up there in the Yukon?
HG[/quote]
Oh yeah, but that’s another story that involved Rastafarians burning bricks in a junge clearing (yes, still in the Yukon).
When I was a young teen, I was camping out on a beach (on the Long Island Sound, NY) with a friend one summer night when an auorora borealis occurred. It was incredible, something like this:
I was sat on a little hill once in England when I noticed clouds like the underside of an egg carton. After a while they started to rotate rapidly and dip towards earth.
I started to run away. Very wierd.
Then there was a huge thunder storm and then everything was nice agian.
It was probably the start of a tornado which didn’t make land.
Clouds are cool. I saw one like a dog once and one even looked like Jethro Tull’s beard.