Mackerel Sky

One of the college courses I took was the fabulously named, “wind & weather for the serious yachtsman” and it was a meteorology course. If you’re in the ocean with no radio, you need to be able to read the sky. I loved it and have been a big sky-watcher ever since. As I left the office at lunch today, I happened to glance up and see the most amazing mackerel sky. I remembered from my class that this is unusual in that it was a very high sky and that it indicated rain in the forecast. In fact, there’s an old mariner’s rhyme that says, “Mackerel sky, mackerel sky. Never long wet and never long dry”.

The occurrence of these clouds is an indicator of moisture and instability at intermediate levels of 8,000-20,000 feet. As soon as I posted a picture of these clouds on my FB page, I noticed that others were posting them, too.

Our local investigative paper, Baltimore Brew had these two images.

An old sailing team mate, Pete Carrico, posted this from the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Washington Cube, the pseudonym of a Washingtonian friend, posted this from the late afternoon.

My friend Mary, who writes Barn Bug Studio Blog, weighed in with this stunner,which then lead to this amazing shot.

To see some pictures of another unusual cloud formation from a few summers ago, click here.

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