Lenticular clouds form an amazing sky o\u2019er Montrose<\/p>\n
Published 5:40 am Saturday, July 11, 2026<\/p>\n
Sometimes the sky puts on a show that stops people in their tracks.<\/p>\n
That was the case on Friday when a series of photographs from Cathy Aitken landed in the Trail Times inbox, capturing an unusual cloud formation hovering above the mountains near Montrose.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the smooth, layered cloud resembles a giant flying saucer or a stack of pancakes suspended in the sky.<\/p>\n
While its appearance may seem otherworldly, the formation is a well-known meteorological phenomenon called a lenticular cloud.<\/p>\n
Lenticular clouds form when moist air flows over mountain ranges and creates atmospheric waves on the downwind side.<\/p>\n
As the air rises in one of those waves, it cools and water vapour condenses into a smooth, lens-shaped cloud. As the air descends, the moisture evaporates, giving the cloud its distinctive, stationary appearance.<\/p>\n
Although the cloud may appear to be standing still, air is constantly moving through it.<\/p>\n
The mountains surrounding Trail, Montrose and Rossland provide ideal conditions for lenticular clouds when strong winds aloft combine with stable layers of air.<\/p>\n
The photographs also appear to capture towering cumulus clouds developing beneath the lenticular cloud, highlighting two very different weather processes occurring at the same time.<\/p>\n
While the smooth cloud above formed in stable airflow over the mountains, the billowing clouds below were likely growing through rising pockets of warm air.<\/p>\n
Lenticular clouds are often mistaken for storm clouds or even unidentified flying objects because of their distinctive shape, but they are generally not associated with severe weather at ground level.<\/p>\n
Their presence does, however, indicate strong winds at higher elevations, making them of particular interest to glider pilots, who use the associated mountain waves to gain altitude.<\/p>\n
While lenticular clouds are not uncommon in mountainous regions such as the West Kootenay, they rarely display such well-defined layers, making the Montrose photographs an especially striking example.<\/p>\n
For anyone who glanced skyward that day, the view served as a reminder that some of nature\u2019s most remarkable displays require nothing more than the right combination of wind, mountains and water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lenticular clouds form an amazing sky o\u2019er Montrose Published 5:40 am Saturday, July 11, 2026 Sometimes the sky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-796163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}