changing cloudscape at dawn

changing cloudscape at dawn --

pink wisps above purple puffballs

above indigo shoals

How quickly the cloudscape changes, layers shifting with the wind at different altitudes. While the Sun is still below the horizon, long red rays touch the clouds, tinging them pink. Above the fields of corn stubble and grain silos, a wispy pink fringe of rain, blown by a high wind, curves down above a phalanx of purple puffballs. By the time the Sun lifts above a grove of trees, its pink and gold beams shoot out through indigo shoals. "Red in the morning, farmer (or sailor) take warning." But the promised and much-needed rain does not fall on the thirsty soil. By midday all that remains of the cloudscape is a lacy tracery of cirrus in an azure sky, mirroring the fractal branches of a shagbark hickory.

dark blue mamma clouds

dark blue mamma clouds

pendulous udders 

blushing pink at dawn

Hovering low in the west at dawn, these mamma clouds looks like the fierce Boreas with his cheeks puffed out, not the gentle Zephyr. The lobe of pendulous clouds forms the face of a lion, ready to roar and spit sleet or hail. However, these udder-like clouds are not harbingers of stormy weather, as some claim, but tend to trail after storms. Sure enough, as the bumpy blanket quickly moves on, the sky clears and the first rays of sunrise pour out from the east, bathing the blue bulges in rosy light. 
          Yet after midnight I am awakened with a jolt by a bolt of bright white light that penetrates my closed eyelids. A moment later, boom! Ah, lightning and thunder, must be Zeus making a dramatic entrance. The rain comes down hard, carving deep grooves in the gravel road, filling the creek to overflowing.