This photo was taken back in January 2010 (but finally uploaded only earlier this year) – offering a chilly blast from winters past. I am curious how/why the stratus clouds hanging in the valley form and persist. I did not notice if they were quite stable or not, and from other experience know that it can be hard to tell when clouds are moving slowly but keeping a similar pattern (for example, cumulus clouds continually billowing up over a mountain and then trailing away). Perhaps it would have been interesting to do at least a few minutes of time lapse, and maybe next time I observe a similar phenomenon I’ll have an opportunity to try that.
Questions:
- What cloud formations are you curious about?
- How do these thin layers of clouds form?
- What drives the extent of these valley clouds (why don’t they fill the valley)?