Lenticular clouds in Scotland
Lenticular clouds over the Munro, Slioch, in the North-West Highlands of Scotland
Lenticular clouds (Latin name Atocumulus Lenticularis, or ‘like a lens’) are ‘lens-shaped orographic wave clouds forming when the air is stable and winds blow across hills and mountains from the same or similar direction at different heights through the troposphere’. (Source: UK Meteorological Office). Orographic means ‘relating to mountains’, which is likely why I’ve always found lenticular clouds highly attractive, their dramatic shapes filling the sky and providing a fine backdrop for mountain landscape photography.
At their most magnificent, lenticular clouds bring up comparisons with alien life forms and UFOs. An excellent indicator of strong jet-stream winds at altitude, they are the result of air currents that rise up over mountainous regions and cool and condense into water droplets. As the air descends, it warms and the water droplets vapourise and disappear. At its peak however, any air just above the dew point forms into clouds that remain still above the wind - picture a standing wave over a submerged rock - and they don’t move, no matter how strong the wind is. Such clouds I understand are generally a good indicator of an incoming bout of bad weather.
I first encountered great saucer-shaped clouds in the early 2000s when I was in Patagonia, trekking around Cerro Fitz Roy and traversing a section of the Southern Patagonia Ice Cap, plus later, when researching a travel guidebook to Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. I wasn’t focused on photography back then - there’s not any lenticular clouds in my landscape portfolio at present - but I do have a great example I feel I can share, which is the cover image for US photographer Linde Waidhofer’s large-format coffee-table book, ‘Unknown Patagonia’, which has beautiful images from Chilean Patagonia. You can view Linde’s image and purchase the book at her website - www.westerneye.com.
It’s been very rare for me to see lenticular clouds in person, either in Patagonia or Scotland, and I’ve never had the opportunity to properly photograph them. This is still the case as the images below were captured in what I’d term ‘run and gun’ style from the road-side beneath the Munro, Slioch (‘the Spear’) and further east as we returned from a backpacking trip in Letterewe in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. I’m proposing however that they illustrate exceptional enough conditions for Scotland to warrant sharing.
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