Caught a weird lenticular cloud over my barn last fall, old farmer neighbor stopped by and told me his theory about them

I was out taking pictures of this super smooth lens-shaped cloud hovering over my hay field around 4 PM one October afternoon. My neighbor George, who's been farming this land since the 70s, walked over and said those clouds mean the jet stream is doing something wild up there. He told me he once saw a double stack of them back in '85 and a big storm hit two days later. This one sat still for almost 20 minutes before it faded away, never moved an inch. Has anyone else had someone older tell you weird folk stories about clouds? I'm curious if other areas have their own local cloud lore.

2 comments

2 Comments

james_ross17d agoMost Upvoted

George sounds like the kind of neighbor everyone wishes they had, the ones with a story for every cloud and bird. My own granddad used to swear that a "fish scale" sky meant the weather was about to turn sour, though he couldn't tell me why. I once tried to photograph a weird cloud formation myself, but my phone camera just made it look like a smudge on the lens, so my cloud lore is mostly limited to seeing shapes in them when I was a kid.

holly6317d ago

Well now, @james_ross, isn't it funny how the old timers always have the best stories about the sky but never a photo to back it up? That double stack George saw in '85 has me wondering, did your granddad ever mention anything specific about clouds that sat perfectly still for a long time before something happened? I'm trying to figure out if George was just telling me a tale or if there's actually some truth to those stories about clouds that don't move.