How many relish the challenge when a nature or weather quiz appears in your social media feeds?
The accompanying image was tweeted Monday by the Little Rock, Ark., office of the National Weather Service, along with the question:
“Can you spot the Weather Balloon? This was about 1 minute after release, nicely camouflaged beneath the altocumulus this evening.”
As quizzes go, this isn’t a difficult challenge for anyone with decent eyesight. But perhaps the point of the NWS Little Rock post was to reveal the beauty of altocumulus cloud formations, parallel bands or clumpy mid-level, gray-shaded clouds typically associated with settled weather.
The formations, which can be strikingly beautiful, sometimes span enormous swaths of sky at an altitude between 7,000 and 23,000 feet.
Writes the U.K.-based Weather Online: “They are white and/or gray in color with generally shadowed parts or undersides and often show a waved aspect.
“They may be well shaped by high winds into lentels or rippled wave patters and might appear as a pancake tower or like an UFO, often sharply outlined, but they may also become partly fibrous and diffuse.”
The quiz answer, if anyone should require confirmation, appears in the image posted below.
