St Jude's Storm, 28th October 2013

Was woken just before 8am by beeping electrical equipment triggered by a power cut. This was taken through my window. You can just see a faint rainbow. Doesn't look like much, but it was blowing a gale.

The power cut lasted 54 hours.

Bright ball of cloud

Looked across the gardens behind my house and spied this big bright ball of cumulus partly hidden by a sheet of stratocumulus and some cumulus fractus.

Fair weather clouds

A few cumulus fractus below wispy cirrus in a mostly blue sky on a fine day. Should have got my washing done.

Flat-bottomed cloud

This was taken soon after 5pm, as it got cooler, when temperature inversion flattened the bottom of some cumulus mediocris, spreading them out.

Brilliance amid the gloom

After an overcast sort of day, a gap revealed this burst of brightness at about tea-time.

Strange skies

These passed overhead, moving east, with a few rumbles of thunder, at about 10-ish this morning. The first time I've seen mamma clouds in Suffolk.

My Cloud Book says,

They are caused by powerful downdraughts, when pockets of cold, moist air sink rapidly from the upper to the lower parts of the cloud, reversing the usual cloud-forming convection of warm, humid air. Their shapes and forms can vary considerably, from near-spherical pouches to tubular, rippled or merely undulating globules, arranged in cellular formation.

Brightness

Some billowy cumulus clouds below a thin layer of cirrostratus this morning, creating a hazy effect. This was taken through a window, as you can see.

Reflected sunset

Some heavy showers today. An elderly friend who came for tea arrived soaked to the skin and had to borrow some dry trousers.




The sun shone briefly just before sunset, reflected off distant cumulus clouds.