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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

The Old Man has donned His Winter Cap

Driving back from the grocery I noticed that there seemed to be a cap cloud forming over Mt. Rainier. So, once we got home and I unloaded the groceries, I scampered around the corner to where I know from previous photo shoots that I have a good view of the mountain and snapped a few.

According to Weather Online, this phenomena is understood as follows...

Cap cloud or cloud cap is a stratiform, orographic cloud that hovers above or over an isolated mountain peak, formed by the cooling and condensation of moist air forced up and over the peak and lenticularly shaped by horizontal upper level winds. The cloud appears to remain essentially stationary.


Since we've had nothing but rain for the last three months, there is plenty of moist air to force up the side of the mountain.

Even though this is not the clearest of days, it is hard to believe that this mountains is 70 miles away, isn't it? A bit of this is the foreshortening that you get with a long focal length lens. I used my 400 mm lens with a 2x teleconverter on it making the focal length = 800 mm. Add to this the smaller sensor of the Fuji X-H1 and you get an equivalent of 1200 mm for a regular 35 mm sized image sensor. Now it begins to feel like you are seeing 70 miles doesn't it?

Today was about the best weather we've had in a spell, even counting the short periods of sunshine we've had. Of course, the next couple of days are predicted to bring more rain to the lowlands and snow to the mountains. Naturally. At least the good news is that we're getting a generous amount of snow in the mountains so that next spring there'll be water for the farmers and perhaps we won't have such a fire risk. At least until later in the summer when the weather forecasters predict that we'll have another dry summer. Oy Vey!

Just for fun, notice the tiny little airplane at the top of the photo below.


 

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