Weekend Walkabout: Mammatus Clouds

I learned to look with dread upon the freaky, alien mammatus cloud. Conventional wisdom was that they heralded tornadoes. Fortunately, research has disproven that theory. The bumpily weird mammatus cloud shows up mostly after the worst of a storm is over. Sometimes tornadoes have preceded the clouds, sometimes not. They do indicate the presence of a severe, but waning, storm. Very rarely, they can also show up in milder weather conditions. At any rate, they are caused by moist air sinking erratically into dry air.

I spotted these clouds offshore my sand dune at dawn this week. Amazing! I did not enhance these photos in any way whatsoever. This is really how they looked.

Mammatus clouds at dawn, MRobb, 2016

Hoping all my readers have wonderful weekend walkabouts!