Crazy clouds over city. Pictures.

I've never seen clouds quite like this before so I thought I'd share.

Location: Lower Mainland, British Columbia Canada
Date: October 22, 2008
Time: 1800 hours

My camera is crappy so I've posted the originals and then I messed with the levels and inverted some of them to show the texture of the clouds better.


Original


Inverted


Levels


Original


Levels


Original


Cropped and inverted


Original


Levels

In the 7th pic you caught a UFO on film. Doesn't look like an airplane. Maybe you shoud edit to mention that in your title and description.

They seem to be Cirrocumulus clouds..

Try a google image search of the same term and see if you agree.

OMG we had some like those a few days ago, they looked like spines! Then like feathers. Winds were moving strangely and the uppers were moving in a different direction than the lower. The sky finally got very strange colored too. Very weird. It si super windy here today.

reply to post by TH3ON3


It's a plane. I saw it flying overhead while snapping the photo.

reply to post by Saidin


I would agree that some of those clouds look like Cirrocumulus Clouds. However, take a look at the first pictures again and I'm sure you will agree those are not Cirrocumulus Clouds.

There was such a wide variety of clouds this evening. I tried to capture all of them.

Maybe you just thought it was a plane. They have the technology to build airplane shaped ships to fool you...possibly.

I see clouds like that every now and then.

They're beautiful.

reply to post by TH3ON3


LOL could be...I know it was a plane though. It was maneuvering quite strangely for a large jet. I was thinking maybe somebody was learning how to fly haha.

Anyways here I've done this just to put your mind at ease.

reply to post by seeker11


I do agree the first few pictures look different, and I can't seem to find any that look exactly like that, with such spread. I've found a few that might be possible, one being Cirrocumulus undulatus, and the other being Noctilucent clouds (which I recommend checking out even if they arn't the right ones).

Interesting! I checked out the Noctilucent clouds on Wikipedia.

They do look similar. But as I was reading the description this isn't the right time of year for these clouds and they seemed a lot lower than they are supposed to be. Also, the clouds that I photographed seem to be a lot more dense than the photos I could find of Noctilucent clouds.

Noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds, are cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of crystals of water ice. The name means roughly night shining in Latin. They are most commonly observed in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator.

They are the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 kilometers (47 to 53 mi). They are normally too faint to be seen, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in the Earth's shadow. Noctilucent clouds are not fully understood and are a recently discovered meteorological phenomenon; there is no evidence that they were observed before 1885.

Noctilucent clouds can form only under very restrictive conditions; their occurrence can be used as a sensitive guide to changes in the upper atmosphere. Since their discovery the occurrence of noctilucent clouds has been increasing in frequency, brightness and extent. It is theorised that this increase is connected to climate change.

Noctilucent clouds are composed of tiny crystals of water ice 40 to 100 nanometers in diameter[1] and exist at a height of about 76 to 85 kilometers (47 to 53 mi),[2] higher than any other clouds in Earth's atmosphere.[

reply to post by seeker11


Yeah I was just reading the wiki also.. not sure what kind they could be. Hopefully someone with knowledge outside of google will come by and answer.

Thanks seeker mighty kind of you, but I really didn't need the assurance since I have seen some at extreme close range disguised as...well UFOs.

reply to post by Saidin


Yeah. I'm hoping this as well. Maybe even some pictures? It was just pretty bizarre because there was such a variety of clouds in the sky (as you can see from the pictures) quite the spread but such variation. Thanks for the info you provided.

Those are artificial clouds.

I live near you OP, about an hour east of Vancouver.

I did see unusual clouds tonght, slightly different than your pics captured, although you have some pics showing parts I didn't see. I even wished I could have photographed them, so thanks for posting yours. I don't recall the time, but it was about the time you took the pics.

One part of the sky looked quilted. For miles it seemed little bubbles covered the eastern portion of the sky. It seemed they all emanated fom one central point from the south, forming rays, that eventually went out further into the quilted effect. I've seen that effect before, but the ray pattern was quite the sight to see. The rays I saw, alternated with dark gray black to a deep aqua blue colour. Unfortunately I couldn't see much of the horizon, looking south-west, then I went inside, if it moved over to show the parts you captured.

EDIT to correct the time I saw them. It was much darker when I saw them

[edit on 23-10-2008 by violet]

reply to post by violet


Interesting. Yes, these were taken an hour east of Vancouver. Yes, I was trying to capture the bubble effect you mention, but my camera was not good enough to capture that. So, as you can see I inverted some of them to get the definition. It was just before sunset. That time when it's light outside but in the span of 20 minutes it darkens, so that may be when you saw them.

Thanks for the info! If you U2U me I can tell you exactly where I took the photos if you're interested.

Cheers

I checked the wiki link, and what I saw was nothing like Noctilucent clouds.

However the quilted effect did look like the Cirrocumulus clouds, but the ray parts were in a different section of the sky.

Originally posted by seeker11[/]

It was just before sunset. That time when it's light outside but in the span of 20 minutes it darkens, so that may be when you saw them.

I guess I saw them about 10 mins before it's completely dark

I'll u2u you