Odd Clouds Over FloydCo

Mammatus clouds over Floyd County

Admittedly, when you compare our tiny tatas to the buxom beauties over Hastings, Nebraska, they’re not terribly impressive.

Even so, this was the first time we’ve spotted mammatus clouds over Goose Creek–as usual, associated with a towering storm cloud whose rain, sadly, never reached us.

There are different ideas about how these sagging lumpy cotton-ball breasty clouds form but ice crystals sinking down below the bottom layer of an anviltop cloud seems to be part of the explanation.

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Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  2. It sounds like you’re experiencing a dry spring in your area again this year. So sorry to hear that.

    It was very dry here on the Eastern Shore of MD last year too, but fortunately so far this spring we’ve had plenty of rain.

    I hope that changes for your area soon, cause drought sure changes the landscape, that I intend to be photographing soon.

    Maybe I’ll do a little rain dance for you, now that I can! LOL!

  4. Well, WE won’t be doing any rain dances for you here in Missouri; we can’t handle the odds that the dance might misfire and dump even more rain on our soggy crops, cricks and yards. We are deluged here.

  5. I love your clouds! That is a great shot of them! Kerri told me about your blog and said you had some neat clouds and I agree. Glad I dropped by.

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