As Leah and I were driving home on Friday, Aug 17, I noticed something unusual in the clouds. I stopped and took a photo through the windshield with my phone (as usual).

When I first saw this photo, I thought I had somehow missed the unusual feature in the clouds. But I didn’t; it’s there, but not obvious. I doubt that you can spot what I noticed. Here’s the photo cropped to emphasize the particular feature I noticed.

The clouds look like someone has smudged them upwards. I would have thought nothing of it if the streaked edge of the cloud had been on the bottom. I would have assumed that it was virga. But virga doesn’t fall up. I’m not positive what this is, but I think it must be shadows cast by a cloud on other clouds. The sun was setting in the general direction of the clouds, and it was lower than the clouds, so the sun’s position is at least consistent with that interpretation.

What appear to be glints in the cloud (or maybe eyes) are probably bugs that have been swiped by the windshield wipers. A good reason not to take photos through a windshield.

These images demonstrate how different our perception is when we see a scene in real life, compared to when we see the same scene as a photographic image. For some reason, I had to search the photo to find the feature that immediately caught my eye when I saw it in person.