Clouds of the Day - Thursday, June 29, 2023 - Cirrus Paint a Picture

After days of smokey skies and haze near the end of Thursday seeing these cirrus was a welcome relief. The first photo below is Cirrus fibratus. The cloud looks like a tangle of filaments made of icy crystals. The filaments look like tangled hair, some in streaks and some in clumps. This is a great example of how cirrus gets its name - hairlike clouds in delicate wispy strands.

Below we see more Cirrus filaments. Ice crystals are falling out of small clumps of ice clouds leaving fall streaks in their wake. Near the bottom of the image we see the only type of Cirrus that may cover the Sun’s disk. They are called Cirrus spissatus and they also often trail fall streaks of ice crystals.

The formation below is unusual in that this combination of clouds is often seen together. It is a combination of straight streaks of Cirrus filaments with wave clouds. A dense patch of either low Cirrocumulus or a small clump of very high Altocumulus is visible just right of the lower left tree. Altostratus or Cirrostratus are visible in the lower right. The low evening Sun angle and low position of the clouds makes it hard to distinguish the cloud type.

Below we see a spectacular display of cloud filaments. On the left they appear to spray out of a single point behind the trees. On the right they look like tufts of hair all thrown together while rising out of the same point. Ice crystals are falling from most of these clouds to create the streaks.