Clouds

Yesterday and today had the most fabulous clouds here in the South Puget Sound.  When I was small in Illinois, I would lay in the grass in the summer and watch the clouds.  We all could see different things in them shout it out to our friends - it might be an animal or a person's face or the shape of a flower.  Clouds in the Pacific Northwest are usually stratus clouds - flat and gray and all encompassing.  Cumulous clouds make me light up with excitement.    The cumulous and cumulonimbus ones are so magnificient - sometimes miles high, sometimes dark and threatening - a sky with these clouds fascinates and thrills me.
Perhaps the underlying current of a possible electrical storm, also are rare here in the Northwest, adds to this excitement.  Having grown up in the Midwest, I miss the electrical storms, the huge clouds floating across a sky that is usually blue, and the fireflies.  I do not, however, miss the humidity or the huge amounts of snow snarling traffic or the tornadoes.  Seeing mountain peaks everywhere (because Puget Sound is in between the Cascade and the Olympic mountain ranges), and the ocean and large lakes surrounded by tall fir trees gives daily inspiration and I never tire of these views.

The sky is still blue this evening and I now see stratus, cumulous and cirrus clouds.  Mt Rainier (about one hour from my home on winding, country roads, so large, it makes its own weather) is just barely visible now with a layer of various types of clouds above it, around it and moving toward it.

© Andrea Corwin