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28 October 2007 - Eerie skies descend upon Ireland.
 Northern Ireland weather watcher Martin McKenna could not believe his eyes (and luck) as he looked skyward yesterday. Just like a scene from an apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster the sky transformed from a calm blue sky to an eerie orange colour full of weird and wonderful shapes, within minutes.
In fact, Martin was witnessing a dazzling display of photogenic Mammatus clouds. The name Mammatus is derived from the Latin 'mamma' or breast and is a meteorological term given to a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud. Such clouds are most commonly associated with storms. CLOUD news caught with martin who recalls the events that evening. "On Sunday, thunderstorms were forecast by the local television weather forecasters so I made sure to have the batteries charged and the camera ready if anything exiciting appeared. During the afternoon periodic heavy showers and darkening skies signalled that there was good convection taking place. Before sunset my friend arrived at my door with a magazine article he had found in the Sunday times featuring a well known storm chaser from the states who runs a fabulous website called www.extremeinstability.com and on the cover was a wonderful image of Mammatus clouds lit orange by a setting sun across the flat plains. As we were chatting about the image a heavy shower arrived suddenly so we took shelter in the car until it passed over. After 10 mins I could see orange sunlight breaking from the west and glancing through the rain soaked windscreen I could see bulging orange pouches hanging from the sky, I knew these were Mammatus clouds so we swiftly got out of the car for a better look. We were amazed to see most of the sky covered in orange-gold bags lowering from the a wide deck of cloud. They covered the entire sky. We walked up the road which is near my home in a place called Willow Glynn, Maghera. As we descended a hill the Mammatus passed overhead and so close that it seemed we could jump into the air and touch them. The scene was breathtaking and looked apocalyptic. I wasted no time in getting images. He even obliged me by pointing at the display to add that finishing touch to the image. Within 5 minutes the display had moved into the eastern sky where we could see it from a side on angle. The mamma had formed on the underside of a gigantic cumulonimbus anvil - a single convective cloud which was so big that it looked like a cloud blanket when overhead. This unexpected display was the most spectacular mammatus show I have seen from Northern Ireland. The strange thing was that it looked very similar to that image we had admired so much just minutes beforehand in the magazine". An amazing story and don't forget to check out Martin's wonderful mammatus pictures
In addition, check out Martin's fantastic website
Martin, along with many weather watchers also frequents the excellent UKWeatherWorld website Last update : 30-10-2007 14:10
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