How do we get a cold sunset in an otherwise warm and droughty summer? Go up to 12,000 feet in altitude! That’s what we did on this memorable day, just a few weeks after the solstice, when sunset still was late and setting behind a northern knob of the distant Gore Range (made to look close by a deep zoom). Just the tiniest pinpoint of direct sunshine beamed into the lens through a notch in the terrain, and only for a second. Yet it nicely cast a warm glow off a deck of high-based stratocumulus or lower-midtropospheric altocumulus (depending on whether one wishes to measure the clouds’ altitude from sea level or some portion of the ruggedly variable, mountainous land surface).
13 NNE Grand Lake CO (14 Jul 26) Looking WNW
40.4329, -105.7686