Mt. Rainier and the Overly Dramatic Sky

I mean: that sky. How did that happen?

I mentioned a few days ago that the sunny weather was going away, and I had probably gotten my last good shot of Mt. Rainier. Well, the rain held off, the clouds went absolutely nuts, and I got another photo of the mountain against a crazy-quilt of sky.

Locally, we call lenticular clouds a ‘hat’, but in the case, there are multiple ‘hats’ floating back away from the mountain (riding pressure waves created by the mountain in the airstream). But there’s also a condensation ‘hat’ clinging to the crater at the top of the volcano.

And I guess the ring of clouds around the mountain at the midpoint qualifies as a scarf?

And that doesn’t even touch on the crazy sky above the mountain. Simply insane; I have no words (although ‘crazy quilt’ might cover it).

A panorama assembled from images taken with the Sony α1 camera and the Zeiss Otus 100mm f/1.4 lens. Here’s the central portion around the mountain in color: