In the 2000s, these sharply defined undulations to altostratus formations took on a new name in the cloud-watching community, asperatus, derived from a Latin verb meaning “to make rough”. [The International Cloud Atlas curiously dubbed these “asperitas” in March 2017; I choose to stick with the original name.] They occur most often in areas of elevated low-level warm advection, atop a relatively stable boundary layer. Such conditions often exist either in the morning or behind an earlier area of storms and precipitation. Asperatus formations seem to be relatively common on the American Plains, probably because of fewer intervening low clouds to block the view. I shot a slide of this then-unnamed cloud type nine years earlier in north Texas, and since have photographed them in Iceland, and in the midlevels of a weakening Texas Panhandle supercell.
2 NNE Hoople ND (10 Jun 12) Looking SW
48.5545, -97.6229Altostratus Undulatus Asperatus
In the 2000s, these sharply defined undulations to altostratus formations took on a new name in the cloud-watching community, asperatus, derived from a Latin verb meaning “to make rough”. [The International Cloud Atlas curiously dubbed these “asperitas” in March 2017; I choose to stick with the original name.] They occur most often in areas of elevated low-level warm advection, atop a relatively stable boundary layer. Such conditions often exist either in the morning or behind an earlier area of storms and precipitation. Asperatus formations seem to be relatively common on the American Plains, probably because of fewer intervening low clouds to block the view. I shot a slide of this then-unnamed cloud type nine years earlier in north Texas, and since have photographed them in Iceland, and in the midlevels of a weakening Texas Panhandle supercell.
2 NNE Hoople ND (10 Jun 12) Looking SW
48.5545, -97.6229