My previous Bucket, Brasstown Bald, the highest peak in Georgia, documented a hike up the mountain. I left you with a teaser, that the views from the top were worth saving for a second Bucket.
The hike took place on March 17. The weather was not unusual at all, just a cool overcast day. Viewed from the valleys, the clouds were unspectacular. From the top of Brasstown Bald, it was a different story. At that elevation, the bottoms of the clouds were close, perhaps a few hundred feet above us. They were moving fast, and constantly twisting into fascinating shapes. Some formations looked a bit like funnels, but this was clearly not tornado weather.
Having no need to run and hide, I took a lot of pictures. As you might expect, extracting details from cloud pics is not always easy. The unedited version of the first picture looked like this:
Interesting, but a bit fuzzy. I’m no expert in photo editing, but a bit of experimentation with brightness and contrast improved the originals.
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A bit of online searching led to a plethora of images of wave clouds, some with groovy names such as undulatus asperatus. See what we miss when we stay indoors?
With no further ado, here are my other cloud views. All have been edited to some degree, some within inches of their lives.
Along a north-facing road cut, there were icicles.
As we hiked the three miles from the summit to the main highway, the clouds abruptly parted and the sun came out.
The icicles were soon on their way to becoming liquid water.
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