Brian Boyd
Location: Ruby Mountains, NV
Date: 26 June 2014
The Ruby Mountains of Nevada extend, at the highest point, above 11,000 ft (nearly 3500 m). Signs of the winter’s snowpack remain in the summer months at these high elevations, providing a nice white contrast to the darker mountain slopes, similar to the light and dark colors contrasts of the clouds above. It’s tough to tell from this picture just how deep these clouds have grown, but it’s evident they are of the cumulus variety, with well-defined flat cloud bases. These bases occur at the level of condensation, where the air rises and cools to its dewpoint temperature where saturation and (above which) condensation occurs. Their large coverage over the sky suggests these are stratocumulus clouds.
Community Cloud Atlas 