Never tell me the odds!

Yegads. I saw this while I was outside the other day; that’s a lenticular cloud, shaped by winds blowing over the Rocky Mountains. We see a lot of them around Boulder, but this one looked really familiar. I suddenly realized: it’s a ship from Star Wars!

I thought it looked a lot like Queen Amidala’s ship. But I couldn’t be sure, so I sent a note to my pal Bonnie Burton, aka BonnieGrrl, the proprietor of grrl.com, and major Star Wars dork. She concurred with my conclusion of the cloud looking like a Naboo Royal Starship (I was careful not to bias her by suggesting it; she mentioned it herself). And Bonnie should know: she literally wrote the book on Star Wars crafts!

Still, it looked like another ship from Star Wars, too… maybe even one that might be carrying Vader himself. If that’s the case, I know which cloud I could really use now!

Moisture and updrafts matter not. Look at me. Judge me by my convection do you? Hmm? Hmmm?

I love clouds, and Boulder is a never-ending and always-changing nebular cloudscape of them.

Last Saturday I saw this out my home office window:

It was gorgeous! It’s a lenticular (lens-shaped) orographic cloud; a cloud caused by moisture-laden air rising up and cooling as it passes over mountains. We see them here all the time just east of the Rockies, and when they get all lenticular it’s a very cool bonus.

Orographic clouds aren’t limited to the Earth you know; other planets have atmospheres with some moisture and tall mountains to overcome as well.

Some people think that science takes away the romance of nature. Those people are wrong. When I lie out in the Sun and muse about the pretty clouds over my home town, I can know that what I’m seeing happens on other planets spinning around the Sun, and I’ll just bet it’s happening somewhere on a planet orbiting some other distant sun, lost among the billions in our galaxy.

What could possibly be more romantic than that?