Recently, I contacted Mr Green flash: Andrew
Young. He said this about my image:
"The "cloud-top" flash is a kind I don't understand
well yet. They are
perhaps the 3rd commonest class. I would
say that about 3/4 of all
flashes *seen* are inferior-mirage flashes,
and most of the rest are
mock-mirage flashes. [However, the ones
*photographed* are about 2/3
mock-mirage and 1/3 inferior-mirage flashes,
because it is easier to catch
the mock mirages, and they are a bit brighter
and easier to get correctly
exposed on film.] Cloud-top flashes
constitute something like 3% or 4% of
all flashes seen, I think."
And more about my photo:
"Very interesting! This is a nice example
of a "cloud-top" flash, which is
a type I don't fully understand. However,
your image shows some useful
details:
First, the extreme flattening of the flash shows
that it is produced at a
thermal inversion -- which I had already suspected,
as these are commonly
seen at the upper edge of marine stratus, which
is capped by an inversion.
Second, the very clearly visible diagonal fine
structure slanting from
lower left to upper right in the flash shows
that there are small-scale
waves on the inversion. I have seen this
kind of structure many times in
other flashes associated with inversions."
If you want to know more about this phenomenon,
visit Andrew's page:
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/