While stargazing is a well-known hobby for grey nomads travelling in the Outback, there are far few cloud gazers … but that could be about to change.
And there’s a lot more to it than spotting clouds that are shaped like a face, or a sheep, or even a caravan. Caravanners and motorhomers lucky enough to be in outback Queensland yesterday will probably have been lucky enough to see a rare cloud formation, commonly called the ‘morning glory’.
While travellers who have been in the Gulf of Carpentaria in September may have seen these long, thin, rolls of cloud slide across the sky, the formation is almost never seen in inland areas.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Gordon Banks told the ABC that roll clouds were generally associated with a change of air mass, and in this case a gravity wave … something that is a little bit heavier than the surrounding air pushing in.
“If there’s enough moisture in the turbulence that’s caused by this wave coming through then it will generate a line of cloud,” he said. “In this particular instance it was a beautiful one.”
Mr Banks told the ABC that on the ground you would actually feel a change of air mass, a change of temperature or a rise in the wind from the direction the cloud is coming from.
Michael Butler from Athol station near Blackall said he had never seen anything like it.
“You see some unusual clouds in the storm season with the cold fronts but nothing like that,” he told the ABC. “This was just unusual, for being such a beautiful day, and this cloud just coming out of nowhere.”
