Ordinary-cell convective storms - Severe Convective Storms and Tornadoes: Observations and Dynamics - page 130

Figure 3.29b. (Top) A close-up view on May 26, 1991, western Oklahoma, from the NOAA P-
3 aircraft; (bottom) July 10, 2011, Boulder, CO (photographs by the author).
What we know about mammatus comes mainly from serendipitous visual
observations, aircraft penetrations and airborne in situ measurements, and
Doppler radar and lidar observations, both airborne and ground based ( Figures
3.30 and 3.31 ). Mammatus in cumulonimbus anvils are usually 100m-1 km wide
and 500m deep. Not all anvils contain mammatus and when mammatus are
observed they sometimes occupy only a portion of the anvil. The typical lifetime
of one individual mammatus is 10min. There are a number of measurements of
ice crystals in mammatus, but there are also some observations of liquid water and
a mixture of both liquid water and ice. Air descends in the core of mammatus and
rises with less speed around the mammatus ( Figure 3.31 ). The appearance of