What was up with the clouds over the county tonight?

I received several photos and questions about the eerie look to the clouds tonight. I thought I would take a moment to explain what caused this to occur. Basically, we had a warm front or warm air ahead of a strong advancing cold air mass that was moving into the county. As this was occurring the warm air was being up over the front of the cold air mass. Along with that we had moisture in the air cumulonimbus clouds were developing over a rather narrow zone. As that was occurring of course we received a burst of precipitation mainly in the form of rainfall from those clouds. After the rain started cold air became dominant with evaporational cooling along with the approaching cold front to drop the temperatures about 10-15 in a matter of minutes. 

You can also see how this occurred with the illustration below.

I hope this helps to explain the strange eerie look that alarmed some of you this evening. I also wanted to share some of the photos submitted by some of you tonight as well!

Have a great night everyone! As always thank you for following Rowan County Weather!