That’s what doesn’t happen in nature, but in our case it’s not even the phenomenon itself that is interesting, otherwise I thought of calling it that way:-) You might think that this is some kind of photoshop? No, this is here we Unveiled the Pyramidal Clouds, and these are completely real.
Cumulus clouds, which are a type of cumulus, are usually found under the parent cluster of cumulus or cumulonimbus. They are usually gray in color with dangling elements of a darker shade, but during sunset, for example (when the sun is low above the horizon), they can be gray-pink, gray-blue, reddish or golden.
Let's take a closer look at them …
The base of these clouds has a specific cellular or marsupial shape. They are rare, mainly in tropical latitudes, and are associated with the formation of tropical cyclones. The cells are usually about half a kilometer in size, most often sharply delineated, but there are also blurred edges. Their color is usually blue-gray, like the main cloud, but due to direct sunlight or backlight from other clouds, they can appear golden or reddish.
The clouds are a manifestation of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
Promotional video:
In meteorology, "udder" clouds are called Mammatus.
Because of their sinister appearance, "udder" clouds are often considered to be the harbingers of an impending storm or hurricane.
Mammaths are always associated with thunderstorms and therefore cumulonimbus clouds. Moreover, these clouds can be up to several tens of kilometers away from the thunderstorm. Mammatus remain in the sky from several minutes to several hours, gradually disappearing along with the fading thunderstorm.
Individual "petals" of mammoths are 1-3 km in diameter with an average length of 0.5 km. The petal lasts an average of 10 minutes, but the whole cluster lives from 15 minutes to several hours.
For the formation of mammoths, the proximity of a moist and unstably distributed air mass in the middle and upper parts of the troposphere (a layer of the atmosphere with a height of up to 10-12 km in temperate latitudes) above the dry air mass occupying the lower part of the troposphere is necessary.
In such conditions, under the sinking ice crystals of the "anvils" of cumulonimbus clouds, a system of small ascending and descending air currents appears against the background of a general descending air flow. These streams lead to the formation of a characteristic cloud shape.
In the United States, the appearance of Mammatus was previously associated with the appearance of a tornado in an ensemble of cumulonimbus cells, but it is now generally accepted that the appearance of Mammatus does not mean that a tornado or tornado is about to appear.
However, thunderstorms that generate "udder" clouds have a high likelihood of fireballs and wind shear. Therefore, aircraft crews need to avoid not only cumulonimbus (Cumulonimbus) clouds, but also Mammatus.
Nevertheless, the appearance of Mammatus in the sky suggests that the most powerful and dangerous part of the thunderstorm has already passed.
Mammatus can be observed in the middle latitudes of Russia, but rather rarely. They usually arise during fading thunderstorms in the rear (descending) part of the "anvils".
It is the fact that clouds are formed on descending air movements that makes them unique, because, as you know, cloudiness is formed during ascending currents.