noise to signal

Er, did you check to see if Portland is still there?

very nice cumulonimbus clouds. Did you guys get any nasty weather from it (or rather those that were under it)? The cumulonimbus has grown so much that the tops are getting swept by upper level winds. Good sign that those monsters are big enough to produce lots of rain, lightning and maybe hail.

I'm no meteorologist, but I'd say from the mushrooming of the clouds that their tops are not wind-swept--if they were, they'd be extending out in one direction only.

Clouds--water vapor, that is--require certain ranges of air density to survive, at least in certain compositions, depending on cumulo-nimbus or cirro-stratus or what have you. That's why the bottom of the clouds are generally flat, because they're resting on a table of air that's denser than the cumulo-nimbus' max density. Same effect as when you see somebody's cheek smashed against the bus window while sleeping on the way to work.

The same would naturally apply, then, for the top of a cloud--that there's a certain minumum density that creates a palpable ceiling that a cumulo-nimbus cloud can't penetrate. The effect would then naturally be that if the cloud can't grow upward, it'll grow outward--much like the path of smoke or flames when meeting a low ceiling.

Which, I think, is actually more interesting--you've got a rare live visual representation of exactly how tall the cumulo-numbus layer of the atmosphere is, right there in the sky. Verra kewl.

Whenever I look up and see interesting clouds, I always take a moment to feel bad that John Constable (famous British painter of clouds, 1776-1837) isn't there to see it.

But this one takes the cake. This is the *ultimate* poor-John-Constable cloudscape. Wow.

This is Joseph Smith's way of encouraging us all to eat more oysters.