Photo: Rare phenomenon in the clouds

Red line
Photo by Debbie Cheek

Shoreline resident Debbie Cheek shot this photo during the extraordinary sunset on Saturday evening. She was near the east side dog park on 20th NE, hence the rosy pink clouds instead of the firey reds Lee Lageschulte and Frank Kleyn captured from Richmond Beach and Edmonds.

The red line is most unusual and WeatherWatcher Carl Dinse explains:

"This is a shot of what appears to be an Altocumulus cloud being lit from the sunset on the underside of the cloud. The thin red line is the underside crest of the cloud touching the edge of the sunset rays shadowed either by more clouds or the setting sun. It takes a lot of specific angles to generate this effect, not many are caught in this light, especially in our area. 

"Altocumulus clouds often develop in regions of high instability aloft, with stable air at the surface. This has been true over last Friday and Saturday as we had the upper level disturbance bring us high altitude thunderstorms with cloud bases at around 10-15,000 feet, with some reported well over 45,000 feet in height over the Cascade crest last weekend. 

"These storms were so high, in fact, that most of the precipitation generated by them evaporated in the lower level of stable air before reaching the ground. This is why with these storms we only recorded 0.03 inches of rain on Saturday. We don't see weather like that too often on this side of the mountains, so that is a rare moment."