Lenticular Clouds!

Photos by Robin during a walk in the park near the marina

It was a beautiful morning today, and we took the dogs to walk in their favorite park (which is near the marina and looks out over Bellingham Bay). We also a have good view (one some days!) of Kulshan (Mt. Baker), our areas’s dormant volcano, from parts of the park. On even better days, we can also see the Olympic mountain range which is about 90 miles south of us (in a straight-line distance, meaning “as the crow flies”!—over 200 miles by car on land). I always remember Merry’s love for mountains in the distance when I see the Olympics from here.

Kulshan today was sporting multiple lenticular clouds today, a specific type of cloud which can only form over mountains/mountain ranges. It’s fairly common to see one lenticular over Baker, but today there were four or more (changing fairly quickly as we walked around the park which usually takes between 30-40 minutes, depending on how Daisy, the Senior Dog, feels). I could not resist taking some pictures as we walked!

Here is Kulshan playing with clouds!

I’ve tried many times to take pictures of the Olympics from the park but have failed every time (there’s a mistiness about them even on the clearest day, and their blues and whites blend into the sky, water, and the islands that lie between our two locations; sometimes it takes a while for us to determine if we’re seeing the mountains or only clouds on the horizon—or sometimes, both). They float at the very edge of our perceived world. This is the one of the many attempts I’ve made that I’ve saved, but I’m still hoping to get a better one some day (this one was on a cloudy winter day—a very different ‘feel’ than the summer mountains!).

Ending on a musical note: One of my favorite songs is Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now which starts with verses about clouds and the narrator’s differing perspectives.

May today bring you some good moments!