photo #5541634

Don’t hold your breath for a white Christmas in Australia in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer. Unless, that is, you’re willing to consider what’s happening in the skies above. They may well be filled with streaks of high-altitude cloud known as Cirrus. These Cirrus intortus (named from the Latin for ‘entangled’) and Cirrus fibratus (from the Latin for ‘fibrous’) were spotted over South Plantations, Western Australia by Tania Ritchie (Member 23,514). Their delicate streaks consist of tiny ice crystals cascading through the frigid air of the upper troposphere. You can have ice after all on Christmas Day, whatever the conditions. It might just be at altitudes of 9,000 metres (30,000 feet).