Mammatus clouds and the sequel: Evening of July 19, 2013

Update: A July 19, 2013 Globe and Mail article highlights photos from the July 19, 2013. [End of update]

Mammatus clouds are described as “pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in sinking air” (see link at the beginning of this sentence).

I learned about them at Twitter when many people were posting mammatus photos.

Below are mammatus clouds photographed in Long Branch (Toronto not New Jersey) after a recent evening thunderstorm on July 19, 2013. The next photo is from later the same evening when a different form of cloud structure appeared.

I bracketed the exposures for each image and then chose the ones that worked the best.

@SarahChauncey of Nanaimo, B.C. shared the following Tweet regarding mammatus clouds:

“Not so rare out here any more (they’ve become more frequent over the past few years). Surreal: Snowflakes when it’s 15C.”

Mammatus clouds, July 19, 2013, near the site in Long Branch where Colonel Samuel Smith built his log cabin in 1797. The mammatus clouds are the ones higher up in the sky. The regularly-shaped, darker clouds in the foreground are not mammatus clouds. Jaan Pill photo

Image from about a half hour later and a short distance to the east of previous photo. Jaan Pill photo