Cover: Clouds set amid blue as blue sky and Port Phillip Bay

Some pictures simply demand to be taken, says Ben Albrecht, owner of a jewellery gallery in Melbourne. Ben had just enjoyed lunch with his wife’s family from Italy at a Mornington Peninsula vineyard when they stopped at Arthurs Seat. The lookout offers one of Victoria’s most spectacular panoramas over Port Phillip Bay.

“It was an amazing day (in August 2007), blue as blue, with two cloud layers,” Ben recalls. “So still, with only one boat visible.” A keen photographer from schooldays, Ben always keeps a camera in the car.

In winter, cumulus clouds commonly form over Port Phillip Bay when cold air over the Southern Ocean is blown by west or southwest winds over southern Victoria and the bay. The air is warmed as it travels over the land and the waters of the bay, and rises. As it rises the air cools, and its gaseous water vapour condenses and forms tiny droplets of liquid water, or clouds. The clouds form most often in the late morning and early afternoon after the sun has had time to warm the land and the bay.

On most occasions, small cumulus humilis clouds initially form over the centre of the bay and develop into transitional cumulus mediocris clouds as they are blown further east. They have usually built to the larger cumulus congestus clouds by the time they cross the bay near Arthurs Seat.

Note: The photograph in the printed calendar is NOT watermarked with a copyright symbol and name.

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