Staff Report –
Anyone who has spent time in the shadow of Mount Shasta knows the mountain likes to put on a hat now and then. This fall one of those hats is getting worldwide attention.
“Mount Shasta Top Hat at Sunset,” a photo by Lisa K. Kuhn, made the shortlist for the 2026 Weather Photographer of the Year competition, an annual contest run by the Royal Meteorological Society that drew more than 5,500 entries this year. The image shows a smooth, stacked lenticular cloud glowing in the evening light above the 14,000-foot volcano, the saucer and pancake-stack shapes behind plenty of UFO talk over the years.
Kuhn recalled that she had already been photographing the mountain that evening, dropped her husband and their dog off at home, then grabbed her tripod and headed to the end of her street for a better angle. She said she was surprised by how smooth the layers on the front of the cloud turned out.
The science behind the look is fairly tidy. When moist, stable air runs into a mountain, it gets pushed up and over the top, cooling until its water vapor condenses into cloud, then warming and evaporating as it sinks down the other side. Because that wave pattern repeats in the same spot, the cloud seems to sit still even as air streams through it, and when the atmosphere holds several moist layers, the clouds stack up at different heights.
The public gets a say. Voting for the Public Favorite Award is open on the Royal Meteorological Society’s website through 11:59 p.m. GMT on Nov. 5, 2026, and the winners will be announced Nov. 17.
Reporting from Active NorCal.
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