Sunday, November 09, 2008

The Wave has Arrived

As I was driving home from work the other day I was thinking how winter is steadily taking over Colorado. As I crested the hill leading down to Boulder my thoughts were confirmed by a huge lenticular cloud hovering overhead. It was perched just above my house and extended from Boulder as far south as I could see. It was a text book example of an altocumulus standing lenticular cloud. During the winter the jet stream moves south bringing with it increased wind speeds in the upper atmosphere. When these high winds hit the Rocky Mountains mountain waves form, along with associated lenticular and rotor clouds.

Excited, as I sometimes am by clouds, I rushed home to get my camera. The sun was fading as I loaded up the dogs and headed to the ditch trail for a few shots. The cloud had retreated upwind significantly since I first spotted it, indicating that the crest of the wave was moving west. The sun had almost set by the time I was able to fire off a few shots. High cirrus clouds had formed overhead distorting the lenticular clouds outline, but the reflecting sun highlighted it with deep oranges and provided a nice contrast to the silhoutted Flatirons.



1 comment:

mikemathew said...

The Korean wave might be just touching the shores of India culture and musical landscape, but it had been flowing in torrents in the East and the South East Asian countries. The spread of the Korean cultural wave had been a decade long process, starting from the neighboring countries of Japan and China. The South East Asian countries were next to be hit by the Korean wave. Initially, there were apprehensions about the spread of Korean wave in the other regions of the world as the phenomenon was understood from the point of view of Cultural proximity theory. The koreans wave has errived to the south of the world.
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