It looks like an oil painting where someone intentionally exaggerated the clouds, but it’s the real deal. Isabelle Mullaley took this photo from her home overlooking Pugwash Harbour, N.S. on Monday, June 1. She found the parallel rolls of clouds very interesting and wanted to know what causes them to form like that?
Those are altocumulus clouds. They are made of liquid droplets, but they don’t often produce rain. They usually form by convection or lift in an unstable layer of air above the ground. That lift can be created by a cold front or two different air masses in close proximity. Grandma Says: washboard sky, never long wet, never long dry.
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Cindy Day is the chief meteorologist for SaltWire Network
