Malajo Sssssnake Cloud formations....

[John Kasaian]

Has anyone here captured it with a LF camera? I saw a 1920's b&w (obviously) silent film about the unusual cloud phenomenon through Malajo Pass last night and it has really captured my imagnation! Does anyone know if there any similar cloud formations that occur in the US?
When is the best time of the year to see the Malajo Sssssnake sssslither through the pass?

[John Kasaian]

OK the proper spelling is Maloja (I couldn't make out the subtitles on the silent film correctly---darn cataracts!) According to one website, the wind which creates these formations is unique only to Maloja Pass and shares come characteristic with foehns.

Any other info out there?

[EdWorkman]

Well John- ya made me look
So I googled Maloja and found it is an alpine pass
Then I googled Maloja Snake Cloud and Google Book Search showed up with a page from some book or other with a photo of what it said was a snake cloud near Kremmling CO
I drew the line before i got to foehn, but that must be German and Maloja is the italian version

[Struan Gray]

If you can read German, or can live with auto translations, the local name seems to be "Malojaschlange". The best picture I have found is here:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/19108769

A semi-technical description is here:

http://www.geographie.uni-stuttgart.de/exkursionsseiten/graubuenden/klima.htm

And this book has a brief description (in English) with a picture of a similar cloud in Colorado:

http://books.google.se/books?id=9mGGm1iCutoC

As far as I can tell, it's a terrain cloud which is confined to a snaking tubelike form by a particular configuration of topography and winds.

[GPS]

The phenomenon is perhaps not so unusual, at least not in the Alps. I witnessed it in the autumn of 2 last years when taking meteorological pictures there, near Grimselpass. It is locally predictable.
Stratus can fill valleys and starts to float through openings on their sides like a creamy soup. These flows are usually not too long, less than 1km but spectacular.

[John Kasaian]

Thanks for the info. Kremmling, CO eh? I'll have to look into that!

The 1924 short film by Arnold Fanck which I saw, Cloud Phenomenon of Maloja has been playing about 11:00-12:00 PM-ish on Classic Arts Showcase for the past few evenings if you're interested, or you can see it as a short released with Fanck's 1930 Storm Over Mount Blanc staring the controversial Leni Riefenstahl on the Kino label (Blockbuster rents it IIRC) again in case anyone is interested.

[Doremus Scudder]

I've seen this same phenomenon many times in Austria. I often work at a hotel in Semmering, located in a pre-alpine pass between Styria and Lower Austria. The pass is surrounded by higher mountains (the pass is a "valley" of sorts oriented north-south).

When the conditions are right, the warm wind from the south pushes moist air up and through the pass. Viewed from the hotel, which is up the mountainside a bit, the resulting fog looks like a giant slowly-crawling snake. Sometimes it obliterates the entire valley, sometimes it is just a slim cloud-like stream (snake, I guess...). I've never photographed it, though...

Best,

Doremus Scudder