🧙♂️ THERE’S SOMETHING FOGGY going on here…
FELLS FEATURED: Catbells
I was somewhat excited to spot this from the living room window a few days ago. Believe it or not, I can’t remember ever seeing such a large lump of cotton wool sitting right on top of Derwentwater, and this is how I immortalised the moment.
It’s funny, because I was just reading a few days ago of folks camping out on high hilltops all night because the weather forecast was predicting a good chance of – wait for it – cloud inversions in the early morning. Well, I’m sorry, but I just wandered downstairs and found this waiting for me. Admittedly, I did go back upstairs to the bedroom window to get a bit of altitude on the affair.
And here’s where you might hate me or scoff at my ignorance, but, umm… would another word for your holy ‘cloud inversions’ just be ‘low cloud’? Or even, dare I say it, good old mist or fog? 🌫️
Probably not, I’m sure I’m missing some vital piece of the meteorological puzzle which clearly makes this neither fog nor mist and most certainly not common or garden ‘low cloud’; perish the thought!
Well, I’m gonna solve this mystery in real time with my new best friend – ChatGPT; let’s see if it can elucidate the mystery.
You can make a cup of coffee ☕ at this point if you wish, I’ll be 3 or 4 minutes…
OK then, so, apparently, a cloud inversion isn’t just ‘low cloud’ or ‘fog in a valley’. Something genuinely meteorologically inverted is happening in the atmosphere.
How exciting! And how utterly basic, all you fell-walking aficionados must be thinking, but humour me!
(I’m a bit disappointed that the cloud itself hasn’t actually been turned upside down, but I’m not quite sure how that would work or how you could tell.)
Anyway, I got a wonderfully clear explanation over several paragraphs, but the short version is that:
A cloud inversion happens when a layer of warm air sits above colder valley air, trapping fog or low cloud below and creating the classic “sea of white” you can look down on from the fells.
And I’ll leave it here. In my quest to write shorter, snappier Lakeland Chronicles so I can get more of them out there, I’m visibly… failing, but at least I’ve learnt something, and I’ll be tracking down these upsidedown beasts in the future with the best of ’em, you can count on that! ☁️
Happy landings!
The Laggard of Lakeland 🌄
🧭 (Lakeland Chronicles No.45)
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⛰ Wainwright Log: 75 of 214 Fells Felled / 1 Book Bashed / Visit
