The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

A Red Billowing Thunderhead

9:58 AM  , , , ,  

Singapore
17 July 2013

In a clear sky with some stars and a smattering of alto (mid-level) clouds, the half-moon tonight shone bright and whitish-clear.  


In the distant western sky, there was a huge billowing cloud of at least 6-storeys high. At first glance, it appeared as if a house was on fire. But the ominous red billow stood unchanged for more than half an hour with no visible  flickering light in the horizon.



This is a thunderhead - a towering cumulus cloud.

Rather than spreading out in bands at a fairly narrow range of elevations, like other clouds, cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds rise to dramatic heights, sometimes well above the level of transcontinental jetliner flights.

Cumulus clouds are fair-weather clouds. When they get big enough to produce thunderstorms, they are called cumulonimbus, or thunderheads. These clouds are formed by upwelling plumes of hot air, which produce visible turbulence on their upper surfaces, making them look as though they are boiling. 

The convective airmass is  highly unstable. Just as it takes heat to evaporate water from the surface of the Earth, heat is released when water condenses to form clouds. In thunderheads, this energy can produce short-lived hail, damaging winds, lightning, torrential rain, and sometimes tornadoes. The top of the cloud points in the direction the weather is moving towards.

True enough, this is NEA's weather prediction for the next 12 hours:



More photos are available on Merlion Wayfarer Goes Green's Picasa at :
Natural Phenomena - Clouds and Natural Phenomena - The Moon

Sources


Read More
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)