22 Miraculously Awesome Rare Natural Phenomena That Occur on Earth

9. Mammatus Clouds
Location: Most commonly found in The United States.

Mammatus is a meteorological term applied to a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud. They are pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in sinking air. As updrafts carry precipitation enriched air to the cloud top, upward momentum is lost and the air begins to spread out horizontally, becoming a part of the anvil cloud. Because of its high concentration of precipitation particles (ice crystals and water droplets), the saturated air is heavier than the surrounding air and sinks back towards the earth.The temperature of the subsiding air increases as it descends. However, since heat energy is required to melt and evaporate the precipitation particles contained within the sinking air, the warming produced by the sinking motion is quickly used up in the evaporation of precipitation particles. If more energy is required for evaporation than is generated by the subsidence, the sinking air will be cooler than its surroundings and will continue to sink downward. The subsiding air eventually appears below the cloud base as rounded pouch-like structures called mammatus clouds.