Anvil from Space

Trogdor

Thought this photo looked very interesting, an Anvil over Africa taken from the space station

ABOVE THE STORM: The afternoon sky darkened. Grey clouds billowed to the heavens. Thunder shook the ground and lightning danced overhead. The first droplets of heavy rain were just hitting the ground when the spaceship flew by....

This really happened on Feb. 5th when the International Space Station (ISS) flew over western Africa during an afternoon thunderstorm in Mali:

Orbiting Earth 200 miles high at a speed of 17,000 mph, astronauts took the picture using a Nikon D2Xs digital camera peering through one of the space station's many windows. It shows an enormous anvil cloud. Anvil clouds form in the tops of thunderstorms 5 to 10 miles high and consist mainly of ice. They get their anvil shape from the fact that the rising air in thunderstorms expands and spreads out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere. There's no new science or meteorology in this photo--just a shot of rare beauty.
http://www.spaceweather.com/

Snowbie

Nice pic showing the pilleus representing strong updrafts in the CB.This is actually a small concentrated storm but well outlined or textbook.
Also look at the sister cells being created from the downdrafts of the main cell(the ones that are starting to tower around the periphery). This probably went on during the day to form an MCS and became severe.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

when people say made of ice, how big are these bits of ice they are talking about? i'm having difficulty imagining ice of any size being willing to stay afloat.

Snowbie

Well if the ice is too big and heavy ,it falls as hail.The ice will stay afloat with the strong updrafts from the warm ground untill it gets too heavy it falls and fuses with more supercooled drops and becomes hail.
Some hail is as large as tennis balls in lower latitudes, while in more northern lats ie:Ireland hail can be no bigger than a marble and thats in extreme cases.

As you go higher up in the atmosphere (weather happens in troposphere) it cools alot.In the lower lats(equator) the distance between ground and upper troposphere can be 60,000 foot(is why hail is larger at lower lats and over the plains of the US)
At the arctic its about 15,000 foot. Here about 32,000 foot.

Ice is the creator of lightning, and the higher the cloud the greater the chance of it occuring or severity of it.

internelligent

Great pic. Ireland's weather never seems to be in any way severe. I suppose that's a good thing though. Better than walking outside only to get walloped by a hail-boulder.:D