Early Friday evening, July 23 a severe weather event crossed SE Michigan. Although downtown Ortonville was spared the brunt of this round of storms (more coming today, Saturday,July 24)  Brandon Township and Ortonville was treated to a colorful airshow spectacle of Mother Nature: a line of ominous appearing mammatus clouds that appeared around 8:45 pm and remained into darkness.  Mammatus clouds are also known as mammatocumulus clouds: essentially meaning breast clouds.  The name comes from the Latin word mamma (breast or udder), since many see a resemblance in shape between the pattern of the pouches of these clouds dangling down from another cloud formation spawned by the storm and human breasts. According to the folks at NOAA indivudal lobes (breasts) in the formation can last from a few minutes to over an hour.  Contrary to popular belief these clouds do not generally mean that tornadic weather is coming, for they most often appear at the end of severe weather event. But sometimes Mother Nature can be full of surprise and another powerful storm front is right behind their passing. (These photos were all from the parking lot of Brandon Fire headquarters in downtown Ortonville.)