Mamma
Mamma, or mammatus: relatively rare clouds which usually form when pockets of colder air drop from the base of a particularly unstable cumulonimbus. They are associated with particularly violent storms.
Another old, scanned photo of mine (hence that white line, which I suppose there's probably a Photoshop filter somewhere to deal with?) - as I recall, this one is from when I was living in Essex, and the storm (shortly before sunset) hadn't quite hit yet.
Comments and faves
jugglesky (69 months ago | reply)
Are these often associated with tornados? I see to remember seeing them years ago when we had several tornados touch down.
0olong (69 months ago | reply)
They are indeed!
airencracken (69 months ago | reply)
You know quite a bit about clouds, why?
0olong (69 months ago | reply)
Heh - it's something I've been interested in for a long time, but right now I'm about two thirds of the way through Gavin Pretor-Pinney's fantastic book The Cloudspotter's Guide, so I'm paying even more attention to them than usually.
Right now I've got dozens of cloud pictures stored in my camera, but I haven't had a chance to download, let alone edit them...!
quadrapop (69 months ago | reply)
we get those reasonably regularly around here - mostly in the autumn and winter - not much this year as we had a dry season - not associated strongly with tornados here
0olong (69 months ago | reply)
Thanks qp - well, if you don't see a lot of tornadoes then you wouldn't see them strongly associated! They're pretty much unheard of in Britain, unlike Mammatus, so to the extent that they are strongly related, it's obviously more that they frequently accompany tornadoes than that they are frequently accompanied by them, if that makes sense!
Pink Pepper Photo (57 months ago | reply)
Great mammatus clouds. Not associated with tornados here in Nevada either, often time we don't even get any rain from them
Tom McCallister (50 months ago | reply)
I saw some today after a rain cloud passed over, not a thunderstorm