What's floating over Arizona? l Weather Wisdom Wednesday

It has been just a wild last few weeks with these storms moving in. You're looking at some of the video and the photos that many of you have shared with us. Thank you. It has been just amazing to see, right, Mother Nature at work. So on this Weather Wisdom Wednesday, we had some incredible cloud photos from many of you during our recent storms and, of course, the monsoon over the last several months. So when you snap that photo or record that video, do you know which type of cloud you're actually looking at? Guess who does? Crystal. Our meteorologist, Crystal, is going to break it all down for us because I was snapping photos, too, and sending them to you like, look at this thing. It's wild. What is it? We've had so many great pictures sent in to us over the last few months with the active monsoon season and then recently the active tropical season that we have had. So I thought I would dive into a couple of the specific types of clouds that maybe you've seen before and thought looks like aliens, but you're not exactly sure what it's called. So we're going to start with this one, which is not super rare. We see this, I would say, fairly frequent during a good storm, depending on the setup. So what is this one? It looks kind of like that ripple effect over. It almost looks like you could go boop and pop one of the bubbles that's hanging in the base of that cloud. This is called a mammatus cloud that you're looking at here. So what is happening? It's almost like an upside-down cloud in some ways. Instead of the moisture rising and billowing up in the cloud, in this scenario, cold, moist air within the cloud is actually starting to sink. It's starting to drop towards the ground before it hits what is a more dry and warm air mass. And in this scenario, instead of pouring out of the clouds, it just kind of hangs there. So you get these pouches of moisture that look so neat when you look up at the sky. I actually think this is one of my favorite clouds to just look up at because it's just such a neat thing to see up in the sky. Now, severe weather may be near the area when you see this type of cloud, but this specific cloud does not produce severe weather. So when you see this, you don't need to have like the alarm bells going off just because it looks a little creepy overhead. All right, this is the next shot. We see this so often, especially during the monsoon season. We've all seen this type of cloud before, especially maybe looking off to the east if you're in the valley during the start of the monsoon season where they're not yet making it into the valley. So what is this that we're seeing? You might already know this one, but it's an anvil cloud. How does an anvil cloud form? This is the top of a thunderstorm that you're seeing right here. Now, the shape comes from the growing cloud. Remember, the updraft is what feeds a cloud, those winds that suck up and into a storm system and strengthen it. When that updraft continues to grow that cloud up, up, up, eventually it reaches the top of the troposphere or basically the top of the level of the atmosphere that we live in. And instead of being able to bust through and into the stratosphere, it spreads out along that boundary. So what does it mean? This is a mature thunderstorm. It's strong storms in the area. Could move your way. But if you're looking at it well off in the distance, it may be too far off for you to feel the impacts. And then finally, here's the one from the weekend that we all saw with that really cool sweeping line that almost looked like a wave rolling overhead. So what was this? This was a shelf cloud. Not to be confused with a wall cloud, which is at the base of a tornado and produces, or base of a cloud that produces a tornado. A shelf cloud is a low and long-stretching cloud that is attached to the base of a thunderstorm, but it's found along the front edge of the storm's outflow. Which in this scenario, that outflow wind, remember the downdrafts that fall out of a strong storm. kicked up that dust storm but it also in this scenario because it was such cold and dense air it ended up kind of doing a recycling where it lifted back up and triggered that line of clouds so the shelf that you saw literally the wind fell out of the cloud kicked up wind and dust and then lifted right back up and created that new line of clouds in this scenario strong winds are at the ground moving in cooler air is coming stormy conditions are ahead so this one you usually have to watch because there may be some rain on the way it's pretty amazing to see though my goodness i got so many people sending me that like did we all take this same picture i think we did we all took that same picture yeah amazing and the weather this morning is beautiful yeah it really is all right thank you all for sharing those photos of us because it has been well fun season in fact until Until now.