Scientists captured observations of an ephemeral pileus cloud hovering over a smoke-infused cloud that rose above a wildfire in Montana.
Smooth, veil-like pileus clouds are well-known to atmospheric scientists and cloud lovers and regarded as signs of especially vigorous convection.
One of the images captured by astronauts and published by NASA Earth Observatory is this photograph of a pileus cloud cloaking the top of a volcanic plume rising from the Sarychev volcano after an eruption in 2009.
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Scientists captured observations of an ephemeral pileus cloud hovering over a smoke-infused cloud that rose above a wildfire in Montana.
In summer 2026, scientists took to the air to intercept and study the towering, smoke-infused clouds that wildland fires sometimes create.
Smooth, veil-like pileus clouds are well-known to atmospheric scientists and cloud lovers and regarded as signs of especially vigorous convection.
Named after the Latin for “cap,” pileus clouds typically form when rising columns of air collide with a sufficiently moist layer of air aloft. Over the Sand Creek fire, a fast-rising updraft heated by the fire displaced air vertically and forced a horizontal layer of moister air sitting above it upward. As the displaced air was pushed upward, it cooled, and its water vapor condensed into a pileus cloud.
The pair of images above was captured at 5:40 p.m. local time by the MASTER on one of NASA's ER-2 s, a type of high-flying research aircraft.
"The whole scene is amazing," he said, noting that the science team was fortunate that MASTER's visible channels captured the rapidly developing pyrocumulus and pileus cloud, its infrared channels captured the fire's surface behavior, and downward-pointing radars on the airplane studied the cloud structure.
Researchers who participated in NASA's CRYSTAL-FACE in Honduras in 2002 reported the presence of thin cirrus clouds in the tropopause above thunderstorms that were likely the products of pileus clouds.
One of the images captured by astronauts and published by NASA Earth Observatory is this photograph of a pileus cloud cloaking the top of a volcanic plume rising from the Sarychev volcano after an eruption in 2009.
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