Mt. Rainier and Lenticular Clouds - Dec. 2008 copyright: JMM

December 6, 2008

The Mountain is Out

I've seen lenticular clouds before, but never, ever like this. When I left work today (Friday), I couldn't take my eyes off this scene, which was constantly in my line of sight all the way from Tacoma to Bonney Lake. I called Brian and asked him to get my camera and zoom lens ready for me. I whipped into the driveway, flew into the house to grab the camera, and took off to find a good vantage point. I was darting in and out of streets till I finally found an unobstructed view with no wires and no houses.
They are called "lenticular" because they are shaped like a lens. The appearance of them means a change in the weather, and rain is moving in tomorrow. Don't be alarmed, the size of them does not determine the strength of a storm. lol If it was, based on these clouds, we'd be battening down the hatches!! They form near very large mountains, like our Cascade volcanos, Mt. Fuji, etc. I'd never seen or heard of them till we moved here. We've seen much smaller ones, sometimes those sit right on the mountain top like a hat.
People have mistaken them for UFOs.
Pretty cool, eh?

19 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:10 AM

    What wonderful pictures Jojo, they look like a painting.

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  2. Thanks! I know, even looking at it "live" it looked like a painting!!

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  3. OMG! That's phenomenal! You should include them in the skywatch meme.

    Wow! Never seen anything like that before.

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  4. Very cool. Thanks for going to such trouble for us. Beautiful and a little spooky.

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  5. Amazing, thank you so much!

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  6. Anonymous10:29 PM

    julie...

    wow. JoJo. Amazing. You did awesome. living here in the cascades as i do, i see lenticulars all the time, but never like the ones you shot. great job. thank you.

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  7. That is stunning.

    Why don't you submit them to National Geographic?

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  8. Those are amazing!! Linked you here.

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  9. They look like a 'spinning top' toy!

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  10. Anonymous7:19 AM

    Came over from Daisy's site...AWESOME PICS! I have never seen anything like that in my life! Thanks for sharing!

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  11. My g-d the world is ending :) What an amazing site to see. They look like hurricanes. Wow thank you for sharing.

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  12. Thanks you guys! It's kind of hard to take a bad photograph when you are presented with subject matter like this.

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  13. I've never seen anything like this before. Wonderful pics, thnaks for sharing Jojo :-)

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  14. my goodness, I've never seen anything like those before - absolutely awesome photography jojo

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  15. Those are some fab pictures! I've lived here 20+ years and have never seen lenticular quite like those. Fantastic!

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  16. OHMYGOD

    IT'S MARTIANS!!

    TAKE COVER

    TAKE COVER

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  17. Anonymous1:45 PM

    Wicked cool! I want to touch them.

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  18. Holy crap, those are awesome!!!! I can see why people would think they were UFOs...

    Amazing shots!

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  19. wow, gorgeous photos. Makes me miss WA =(

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