Birds and Nature

I took these photos with my new Canon 60d dslr camera, which allowed me to take them at 1/8000 of a second at F16, using my Canon 70-300mm lens. This provides better photos, I think, of these ephemeral cloud formations. I took the top photo less than 10 seconds after the photo that is in the previous post (in which I used my older Canon xti dslr camera with the same lens but at only 1/4000 of a second which the limit for this camera). I took the top photo above of the same cloud formation but only about a minute earlier and from the same location at Brush Hollow Reservoir as the bottom photo, but used a 200mm setting for the top and 300mm for the bottom pics. Click on photos to enlarge for best views. SeEtta

Colorado continued to have high winds so as I drove around yesterday doing my birding I watched as rotor/wave clouds formed and dissipated. Though many formed into rotor/wave clouds, caused by Kelvin-Helmholz instability , they tended to be pretty wispy and dissipated quickly. This was about the best one, at least in coming out more definitively as a photo. I took this photo from Brush Hollow Reservoir near Penrose,CO looking west past Canon City. More to come from the day before. SeEtta

Two years ago I photographed a long set of rotor (that look like ocean waves) clouds southeast of Canon City, Co that I posted on this blog . I shared them with the Pueblo Weather Service meteorologists who confirmed the photos as what are called rotor clouds that are a rare phenomena caused by "Kelvin-Helmholtz instability" that is related to wind shear likely from strong winds near mountains. Well yesterday near dusk I caught this shorter segment of rotor clouds very near to the same location as those I took two years ago--both southeast of Canon City in Fremont County, both just east of the Wet Mountains and both during a period of high winds. I think I may have spotted these at the end of their run as they lasted about a minute (per time stamp on photos I took) before losing their shape. SeEtta

I have found these cloud formations referred to as 'rotor' clouds or wave clouds on some of the meteriological sites I have found. Apparently the specific phenomena that produces these is called the "Kelvin-Helmholtz instability" that is related to wind shear likely related to the nearby Wet Mountains and some strong winds that were on their way into the area today. SeEtta