KAZAN, 3 Aug. The cloud, resembling a «nuclear mushroom» and frightening the inhabitants of Kazan, is a type of cumulonimbus clouds, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Tatarstan said.
Pictures depicting an unusual phenomenon in the sky over the capital of the republic appeared on social networks the night before.
«Warm air is lighter than cold air, its rise into the middle layers of the atmosphere can be seen in the form of a mushroom cloud. This atmospheric phenomenon is called an inversion, or anvil cloud. This is a special type of cumulonimbus cloud that rises to a height of about 12-15 kilometers, and then it starts to blur,» a spokesman for the Ministry of Ecology said.
According to him, warm and moist air from the surface of the earth forms a powerful flow that breaks through the thermocline between it and the upper cold and dry layers of the atmosphere. Mixing in the cold layer, water vapor condenses into raindrops, snow or hail and begins to fall in the cooling updraft.
According to the interlocutor of the agency, on August 2, no excess of the permissible content of pollutants in the air was detected in Kazan.