Lenticular Clouds

Lenticular clouds are not common clouds, such as cumulous, cirrus, stratus, cumulostratus, nimbus, cumulonimbus, etc. They are a special cloud, because they do not form high in the sky, such as cirrus, nor do they form over bodies of water such as cumulous and nimbus clouds. They form over mountains when the weather conditions are right, usually beginning in April, when it's spring and the atmosphere is confused for about a month, and also near mountains and valleys in a humid climate: Allegany County, NY. "Lenticular" simply means lens shaped. When a warm, humid mass of air moves over a mountain and the dew point drops to the point of condensation, lenticular clouds form. These clouds sometimes never leave their post at the top of the mountain, but, if you're looking closely enough a point in Alfred where you can see over the trees (such as Hairpin Turn), when a warm front came in the night before, you can see altocumulous lenticular clouds traveling across the sky from the north. If you happen to be grocery shopping at the Hornell Wegman's during one of these spring/summer cycles, you can see hundreds of these brilliant clouds stacked upon each other scattered across the sky from the parking lot, traveling and dissipating towards Alfred.