Towering cumulus created a strange and eerily beautiful visual effect, shadowing boundary-layer smoke that had wafted 125 miles from the Cow Camp fire in Wyoming. That 6,000-acre blaze started a few days earlier in the Medicine Bow National Forest NW of Wheatland WY, and sent pulses of dense smoke skyward. Southwesterlies behind the dryline carried the smoke to the northwestern part of the Nebraska Panhandle. An area of cumulus clouds that had been concentrated along a dryline wave for much of the afternoon deepened considerably as the smoke moved in, despite the latter’s subtle shadowing effects. This suggests that finer particles in the plume served as cloud-condensation nuclei to encourage growth. A small, short-lived storm soon developed from this process.
15 NW Chadron NE (8 Jun 12) Looking WNW
43.9882, -103.2007