My wife and I took our two daughters and 5 grandkids to the movies this afternoon in Carlsbad, New Mexico. About halfway through the movie, our 1-year-old grandson decided he was done with the movie, let the crying begin. So my wife took him outside to entertain him, which he loved.

I got bored with the movie and joined her. I stepped outside of the theater and the sky was just covered with mountain wave or standing lenticular clouds (altocumulus standing lenticular clouds). So I grabbed my camera and tripod out of our truck and this video is the result. It's been a long time since I've seen the sky in Southeastern New Mexico layered with stacked lenticular clouds like today.

Looking at area surface observations, and based on my 19 years of surface weather observing I noted the following: A few cumulus clouds formed underneath the lenticular clouds with bases around 9,000' AGL. A broken deck of lenticular clouds had formed at 11,000' AGL according to the Carlsbad ASOS. From there they were layered to around 16,000' AGL, with a thin broken deck of cirrus clouds above at around 30,000'. Several times today we had scattered cirrocumulus standing lenticular clouds around 25,000' AGL. Notice the irradiance in the cirrus clouds above the lenticular clouds while looking due west of the city.

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