The main characters of today's post aren't a rarity here where I live, they appear every summer. But I see them only a couple of times, or just once, a season.
Late last night, while preparing the post, I finally found out the name of the phenomenon.
These interesting formations above the small-town scenery are known as Mammatus clouds.
I photographed them a couple of weeks ago, on the 22nd of July.
Here, besides one of the original photographs, you can see a simple Photoshop edit that makes the clouds look more three-dimensional and dramatic. I used the "invert" option to get that effect.
While I was photographing the great sky above my neiberhood, the cat called Bembo was resting on the long bench in front of the house. The weather was hot & humid so the cats, dogs, and people were more or less equally sleepy.
Mammatus clouds are often associated with severe thunderstorms. The storm on the 22nd of July was pretty loud and strong, but it didn't last long. A couple of hours later ...
... the sky was clear and blue again. In the background of this photograph, you can see a group of beautiful tall cypresses in the card of the neighboring house, while in the foreground, you can take a look at one of the fig trees in my backyard.
This is my good old pomegranate tree.
Here you can see the only flower on that tree.
On the 22nd of July, the tree was in the short transitory phase between the loosing of the beautiful red flowers and the appearance of the delicious red fruits.
According to the Wikipedia article: "The existence of many different types of Mammatus clouds, each with distinct properties and occurring in distinct environments, has given rise to multiple hypotheses on their formation. The plenitude of proposed formation mechanisms shows, if nothing else, that the Mammatus cloud is generally poorly understood."
This weird-looking summer phenomenon always looked like a sudden appearance of a menacing mystery in the middle of the sunny carefree vacation atmosphere, and now, Wikipedia gives a bit of credit to that sensation. I mean, the Mammatus thing isn't that kind of epic supernatural mystery, but it still keeps some secrets.
The summer storm didn't last long, but the Mammatus clouds show was even shorter. Much shorter. They disappeared five or six minutes before the rain started falling. In the following photograph ...
... Starka, the oldest of my cats, is posing in the partially open living room window.
Half an hour after the refreshing storm that brought a short but intense rain ...
... a friend came to visit me. His name is Denis but he's known as 
