We saw sunshine and warm temperatures for much of the day on May 6, 2010. During the afternoon, I noticed “different” clouds in the sky. I will admit, when I was little I often watched the clouds, seeing everything from elephants to castles. I still like to see what shapes I can see in the clouds. On May 6th, the sky reminded me of the ocean, with all the breaking waves I saw.

Above and below are a few photographs of the “strange” clouds. I’ve done a lot of digging and the best I have come up with so far is some type of lenticular cloud. They almost look like cirrocumulus lenticularis, but cirrocumulus lenticularis are pretty rare, so I am not convinced that is correct. The circular cloud in the photograph below is the cloud that makes me think it could be a type of lenticular cloud. Regardless of what they were, they were a great sight, and most likely, a sign of unsettled weather heading our way!

Severe storms pushed through the area overnight on May 6, 2010. Storm reports ranged from damaging winds to several tennis and golf ball size hail reports. These strong to severe storms also lit the sky up with a lot of lightning. Below are some great photographs of the lightning. They were taken in Topeka, Kansas by David Behzadpour.

I went to a Mother’s Day garden party with my great-aunt on May 7, 2010. Luckily, it was an indoor garden party, because cooler, breezy weather settled in behind the May 6th storm system. The garden party inspired me to take pictures of irises from my aunt’s garden. While the hail we saw the night before may not be great for gardens, the rain we’ve seen lately certainly has been.

Cooler weather continued into the weekend, but mostly sunny skies returned for May 8, 2010. It turned out to be a beautiful day, which was great news for the hundreds of people who headed to Downtown Topeka for the Eagle 99.3 Classic Cars Cruise Night. The scene reminded me a lot of the Disney/Pixar movie “Cars.”