Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Sunset over New York

How was the evening sky at where you were the day before? I bet not as interesting as the sky over in New York. New Yorkers were treated to some fancy cloud formation known as mammatus clouds just after sunset. They look just like candy floss balls or cotton balls dangling from the sky. Or perhaps, udders? hehe... What do you think? Have you seen anything like it?








According to Wikipedia, They tend to form more often during warm months and over the midwest and eastern portions of the United States, and more infrequently over the west and southwest. Due to the intensely sheared environment in which mammatus form, aviators are strongly cautioned to avoid cumulonimbus with mammatus.

Mammatus may appear as smooth, ragged or lumpy lobes and may be opaque or semitransparent. Because mammatus occur as a grouping of lobes, the way they clump together can vary from an isolated cluster to a field of mamma that spread over hundreds of kilometers to being organized along a line, and may be composed of unequal or similarly-sized lobes. The individual mammatus lobe average diameters of 1–3 km and lengths on average of 0.5 km. A lobe can last an average of 10 minutes, but a whole cluster of mamma can range from 15 minutes to a few hours. They usually are composed of ice, but also can be a mixture of ice and liquid water or be composed of almost entirely liquid water.



Photo source: Gothamist.com

14 comments:

  1. Wow! I've never seen such cloud formations here in KL! It looks like cotton balls alrite! Haha!

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  2. Anonymous12:37 PM

    Beautiful sky watch. I think there have been instances over here where the clouds were really puffy and looked like cottonballs...which isn't often though.

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  3. Oddly enough, I saw them here in April 2006. Never before in my longish life had I seen them before. Really amazing sight! They didn't cover the whole sky, however, and only lasted a few minutes.
    These pics of mammatus over NY are great. Thanks.

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  4. Foong, me neither though I've seen a UFO.

    Mei Teng, cloud-watching can be quite a delightful pastime, isn't it? Especially for photographers like yourself.

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  5. PandaB, thanks for bringing me back to then. April 2006, that could have been the same time that Iraq experienced the same phenomenon as indicated on Wikipedia.

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  6. Aw PHOOEY! I missed them!

    Of course once again I have to laugh at the wonder of the Internet as I find out what I missed via a blogger in Kuala Lumpur! :D

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  7. "Mammatus" is a new word to me, I learn something new. Wow, amazing clouds, they are fantastic for photographing as they have these great textures. Love the dramatic skies. Are you in New York though? Just asking as I thought I noticed something strange to the time zone :o)

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  8. Oh, I remember reading your post about the UFO! I wish I can get to see a UFO in my lifetime! It'll be super cool! : )

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  9. Bonnie, LOL! I know. Sometimes I feel the same too when I read something that happened around here on a foreign blog. The Internet sure is amazing.

    Ai Shiang, am I in New York? I wish! Something strange about my time-stamp? hmm... Gotta check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.

    Foong, you make it sound so special. hehe.. Maybe it is, as we don't see UFOs everyday. I was just there at the right time, I guess. Besides, it was too far away for the sighting to be more memorable. Oh well..

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  10. Ai Shiang, time-stamp checked. It is correct, in sync with local KL time. Thanks again.

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  11. If we have time to spare,cloud watching is a good pastime. And one is always looking up ( positive?) and not looking down ( negative?) ha! ha!

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  12. Sorry HappySurfer,
    I wasn't being clear. It is your Internet Service Provider's (ISP) time zone. It is 17 hours behind me. Are you using local Malaysia internet provider? Maybe they didn't set it properly. Not a big deal, I was just curious :o)

    Have a nice weekend.

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  13. Nice clouds! I'm just amazed :D

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  14. Hi Keats! Welcome..

    I like what you said about looking up vs looking down. Makes sense. haha..

    Ai Shiang, thanks.

    Jim, I saw some yesterday but they are definitely not as pretty as these.

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