And, now... A bit of Cloud Art....

[Pedro C. Fernández]

Last 14th September, one of my 'comrade-in-arms' ( :lol: ) in Cazatormentas.Net took a couple of impressive photographs about orographic waves. I had never seen something like that before... Absolutely incredible!

http://www.cazatormentas.net/foro/index.ph...pic,4538.0.html (http://www.cazatormentas.net/foro/index.php/topic,4538.0.html)

[Michael Auker]

Wow, the most amazing clouds i've ever seen!

[HAltschule]

Dear Pedro,

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but those cloud photos are not 100% real are they? They seem like they are either painted using a editing program or something? Just verifying my impression.

If they are real, then I have never seen anything like that either.

Regards.

[B Ozanne]

Howie,

I don't know Pedro or any of his friends, but I would backup those photos. I've seen all sorts of mountain waves and those look real.

[Glen Romine]

I think the clouds are probably real - but the images have been markedly enhanced with photoshop or a similar tool. There are clear demarkations where a mask was used, and some were simply overly enhanced to the point of no longer even looking realistic. Nevertheless, some nice images in the mix.

Glen

[HAltschule]

That's what I thought. They looked nice but a little too tweaked.

PS: I've enjoyed the tornado fotos you posted last week. Those were amazing catches!! Nice job.

[Pedro C. Fernández]

I can't answer to your questions instead of him, but I think he could only change the contrast and adding a focus mask (I suposse he used a polarized filter). You can be sure he didn't draw or add anything more to the photograph. The clouds you see in the picture are the clouds there were in the sky. I completely believe him! It doesn't seem fair to me to accuse him of painting or adding something to the picture... That's not true :roll:

[Andrew Khan]

They look like a mix of lenticular clouds and wave clouds. I do believe these are real photographs, I don't believe anything was added to these, but I assume he did some contrast modification.. Glen, could you please point out where a mask was used on these images? I can not see any realy evidence of this..

[B Ozanne]

Nobody really ever listen to me, but after looking at those images again I have seen clouds that look exactly like that. These aren't the type of clouds you see in the plains. They are more common over mountainous terrain. There are several different types of mountain waves clouds here, that just happened to be properly lit.

Maybe he messed with curves or levels or did some contrast masking, but those clouds are real.

[Robert Dewey]

Very impressive... I am sure those photos are pretty close to what was actually experienced.

BTW Bill, I'm listening :o

[Aaron Kennedy]

Tell the dude to lay off the sharpening algorithms.... some major "haloage" going on there. Nice clouds though!

Aaron

[Andrew Khan]

To show this cloud is real, is is a cloud photo, with similair characteristics.

http://www.crystalinks.com/lenticular1.gif

[Susan Strom]

I live in desert mountains (really mountainous, with ridges and sawtoothy looking passes). Sometimes, I swear I see hobbits :) In the winter when there is rain (this is the Sonoran desert's second rainy season - the other is summer monsoon), sometimes the clouds look just like the ones in the photos, especially in the morning. The air upslope is full of pockets and undulations and it shapes the clouds into laminar shapes and even a wave or two. It looks to me like the clouds are real but perhaps he used a polarizing filter on his lens, just a guess.

[Lisa Wadlow]

Beautiful pics. Thanks for sharing. :D

[Sam Sagnella]

There a similar event over a city in MO earlier this year, which I found out about through ST. Maybe Springfield or Joplin, I'm not sure...I'll post the archived thread when I find it.

[Andrew Khan]

Originally posted by Sam Sagnella
There a similar event over a city in MO earlier this year, which I found out about through ST. Maybe Springfield or Joplin, I'm not sure...I'll post the archived thread when I find it.

I recall the event your speaking of, Sam. I believe it was in Joplin, MO. However, those clouds were called lenticularis mammatus and/or cumulonimbus mammatus, and these are different than those. Here is a link to that event. http://www.kschaser.com/lenmammatus.html

[Sam Sagnella]

Thanks, Andrew, thats the event I was thinking of.
http://www.ksntv.com/news/coolwxpics/default.asp
http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6545
http://stormtrack.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6928

[Pedro C. Fernández]

Fantastic pictures in that link although I think these clouds are not the same. In this case, we are talking about stormy clouds while in the first case we are talking about Orographic Clouds (lenticular clouds and other asocciated clouds with this situations)...

[Andrew Khan]

Right, the clouds in the link Sam and I posted were clouds rendered from storm effects. The clouds you posted are orographic clouds. (Clouds rendered by the earths terrain).

[Pedro C. Fernández]

Originally posted by Andrew Khan
Right, the clouds in the link Sam and I posted were clouds rendered from storm effects. The clouds you posted are orographic clouds. (Clouds rendered by the earths terrain).

Aha... For example, I took this one from a big cumulonimbus cloud last 1st June of 2003, here. Clouds showed these shapes after a shelf-cloud from an arcus came across.

http://afotus.meteoclimatic.com/gale/clouds0001b.jpg

We are not talking about the same clouds.

By the way, the autor has told me he only used the NikonView software (he has the Nikon D70) with polarizing filter and he selected a focus mask and automatic colours... He is traying to log into the forum but he can't. Is there some problem with his account perhaps? :(

[Joey Ketcham]

Those look similar to the clouds we had here a fwe months ago... you can see those on my site:

http://www.kschaser.com/lenmammatus.html

The most amazing clouds I have ever seen in my life!

[DELIGNY Vincent]

:shock: thank you very mutch Pedro for sharing this very beautifull "seal" pictures!!!

[Mike Kay]

I don't think any of these cloud photos in cazatormentas.net were faked at all, other than maybe contrast enhancing. (hey, even chaser do that with poor-contrast sups and tors!)

I've seen similar orographic wave clouds a number of times in southern BC, usually over Vancouver and the Lower Mainland region. They usually seem to be most common in the fall and winter there.

And recently, I did see a layer of those highly "sculpted" mid-level clouds over the northern Okanagan region of BC while on a WestJet 737 flight from Kelowna to Edmonton earlier this May. Such orographic wave clouds may indicate high turbulence, because that flight got pretty rough very shortly after passing through that sculpted cloud deck.