Caleb Jones took this photo in Estes Park, Colorado (USA) on 28 October, around 3:10pm local time. The weather had been mostly clear on this day. These clouds were relatively far from the sun, and the vivid iridescent colors seem to be caused by very small droplets that polar stratospheric clouds have. But the edges of the wave cloud look more like regular mid-level waveclouds.The 00 UTC 29 October sounding of Denver doesn't show unusually strong winds at high altitude, at 40 to 50 kts from the NW. In fact the entire troposphere seems rather dry on that particular sounding for lenticular clouds to occur.
I do not think this was caused by a missile launch either, considering the lenticular shape of the clouds.
I am wondering if these could be stratospheric clouds, or just some quite unusual appearance of lenticular mountain wave clouds. I received another report from someone else in Colorado who also took images, and am waiting for her approval to post them here as well.
2 comments:
I have seen once similar stuff in Philippines. They occurred at sunrise.
There are some cases of MoP which developed to lower temperatures on the crystals of HNO3, H2SO4 and another catalyst of chemical components which we send in the higher atmosphere. Some of this solidify already to 72°C. For this I suspect MOPs also to lower temperatures as 80°C. I know several cases from Germany, Netherlands and Island who observed the MOPs to similarly terms like this in Colorado.
Cordial greetings
Claudia
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