Unusual feature, Colorado Supercell 26/05/2010

[J Allen]

Hey Folks,
I'm in a bit of a quandry to explain this feature, and figured I'd put it out there to see what we can come up with. The day of the storm was the 26/5, the SC that headed towards Fort Morgan from Denver. This feature was present in the anvil, above an inflow band after the earlier low sucking scud features, at the same time it was producing normal mammatus along the rest of the anvil. My first though was the mother of all mammatus, but I can't say ive seen one this large with its own pendant mammatus before, then I thought anvil knuckling, but seemed a long way seperate from the updraft for that. Please note this is a 15mm wide equivalent on a 35mm camera, so its pretty damn big to take up so much of the frame. I call it the "Udder in the Sky"

Anyway,
Looking forward to hearing replies.

 

[Joshua Nall]

Just now saw this. I'd have to explain it as abnormal mammatus. But your guess is as good as mine when it comes to the exact cause. Larger than normal bubble of cold air sinking through the anvil maybe? Isn't that what causes mammatus? Looking at it another way, why is mammatus usually so uniform? Stuff like this is why I like storms. Thanks for sharing the shot.

 

[Dan Hildebrand]

Do you think that phenomena and this could be related? They seem to share some features. I took this driving into Michigan from Ohio last July. These clouds were at the edge of a rather ominous looking storm (not sure if it was a supercell or not). No rain fell from these clouds. It wasn't until we had cleared them that the sky turned mostly grey and it rained quite constantly for about 20 minutes.

 

[Joshua Nall]

Do you think that phenomena and this could be related? They seem to share some features. I took this driving into Michigan from Ohio last July. These clouds were at the edge of a rather ominous looking storm (not sure if it was a supercell or not). No rain fell from these clouds. It wasn't until we had cleared them that the sky turned mostly grey and it rained quite constantly for about 20 minutes.

That looks like a trap door of some sort. Some seeing this may assume they would soon see people being transported through it and then begin to contemplate wether or not they would be "left behind".

Seriously... what is that? A reflection on the window or something?

As for as the clouds.... could be mammatus, or the underside of a gustfront/shelf cloud looks like this sometimes. Picture is a bit dark so its hard to get a feel for the depth

 

[Zack Cooper]

That looks like a trap door of some sort. Some seeing this may assume they would soon see people being transported through it and then begin to contemplate wether or not they would be "left behind".

Seriously... what is that? A reflection on the window or something?

As for as the clouds.... could be mammatus, or the underside of a gustfront/shelf cloud looks like this sometimes. Picture is a bit dark so its hard to get a feel for the depth

I thought the same thing about that door. LOL! could be Mammatus clouds but I'm not really sure, interesting!

 

[Dan Hildebrand]

Haha.. i never really even thought about the "trapdoor". It is indeed, a portal to another universe.

Yea, it's just a reflection. This was on our way to our family vacation destination, so i was stuck in the backseat to take pictures of cloud phenomena. I was leaning towards it being part of a gust front, but i'm not entirely sure. The clouds seem to share characteristics. Below are the pictures taken that afternoon. There was a lot of storm activity in Ohio and southern Michigan.

I'm sorry the pictures are so dark. It really was almost dark as night under those clouds. This was the best the photo function on my video camera could do.

 

[Alan Switzer]

I'm surprised no one has had this observation yet, but I thought the first picture that started the thread looked like a face poking through the clouds. That's my un-scientific, non-meterological observation of it.

 

[Dan Hildebrand]

Haha i can see it. I was more focused on the "udder in the sky" aspect

 

[George Dikun]

Do you think that phenomena and this could be related? They seem to share some features. I took this driving into Michigan from Ohio last July. These clouds were at the edge of a rather ominous looking storm (not sure if it was a supercell or not). No rain fell from these clouds. It wasn't until we had cleared them that the sky turned mostly grey and it rained quite constantly for about 20 minutes.

Gust fronts roll in by me all the time, a lot more often than supercells. That looks a lot like many of the pictures I've taken of the undersides of them. I think the technical term is "scary clouds."

 

[Dan Hildebrand]

Thanks.. they definitely are scary if anything

 

[TrumanBoyer]

I just saw this post - whoa. I saw one similar lowering in New Mexico once. The storms formed over the Mt's and anvils blanketed (HEAVILY) for at least 50 miles east of the Mt's. Thick, heavy, DARK GREEN mammatus, and boiling upside down at less than 1000 ft. I drove west under it for about 20 miles to investigate. Scariest looking thing I ever saw. The lowering I saw was dropping halfway down from the clouds, and maybe a half mile across, and kind of hemispherical, and might have been rotating slightly, sort of turning itself inside out. I decided to move back east, stopping to check on it every couple minutes. It was persistent. I got out from under the anvil nearly an hour later, (storm moving east) the feature was still there, and it rained like I've never seen before. I have been in Hurricanes, and never saw rain like that. Spent the night in a hilltop diner parking lot, while all the roads around were closed due to flooding.

Here's what I think it might have been. Low level thick cumulus cloud. Anvil envelopes it. Ice crystals from anvil fall though and "seed" it. (provides condensation nuclei). Rain falls from its center, initially. Extremely dry desert air under it re-evaporates the rain, and cools down the air, dropping the condensation height, and further lowering the cloud base. Or maybe something like that. Don't know if that's what you saw, but I am glad someone else saw something like it.

Now I can say that I am not nuts. Or at least I am not the only one....