A period of westerly tropospheric flows in Scandinavia is continuing to provide occasions of Mother-of-pearl (MoP) clouds to Finnish observers. Several MoP displays have been observed just before the Christmas at different locations, in particular in Central and Northern parts of Finland, but also at the Southern coast. The photograph taken by Mauri Laitinen in Kuopio, Eastern Finland, shows the beautifully coloured details of the afternoon display of 23rd December.MoP clouds are seen a number of times each winter in Finland, but displays as bright as this one are fairly rare.
Usually the MoP clouds are related to stratospheric temperature colder than -80°C.
wunderful picture! I'm very impressive. Thanks for post it!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes
Claudia
Hi, nice picture indeed. I saw in the morning of the 20th of december another mother of pearl cloud, looking south-east from the train between Stockholm and Borlänge, middle of Sweden. It was small but shined in the orange dawn light.
ReplyDeleteI photographed these MoP clouds on December the 23rd at 9:55 AM in Nurmo, Western Finland.
ReplyDeleteI missed the best display (with more bright cloud patches and darker skies) I wittnessed soon after arriving at the nearby Seinäjoki railway station at 9:19 (according to the schedule).
Mika, thanks for the links with the wunderful pictures. Unfortunately we observer in Middle European couldn't see never such wunderful phenomena!
ReplyDeleteIn the winter of 2002 (dec.23th) we saw in Kiruna (Sweden) lotst of these clouds. We actually went to see the aurora borealis (northern light) but we saw this instead. The mayor of Kiruna told us these clouds were at 4km hight at a temperature of minus 70degrees celcius,and reallt rare to see.If have relly nice photos of them!
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