Dreamworld
There is a world that seems like it must be a dream, it must be an imagined place, such is its calm and beauty. Its a world above the clouds. The air is still, often silent, and always special.
I recently spent a morning in one such place, just outside Boulder Colorado. After checking the forecast the previous evening, it seemed the odds of an interesting sunrise was high but made no mention of fog or a possible inversion. My alarm went off, I let our dog out to use the restroom and noticed it seemed foggy. I got excited and as quietly as possible, ran to check the satellite image. I changed plans and started a mission to get above the cloud layer that had engulfed the Denver/Boulder metro areas. Racing through the early morning fog, I drove up a local road that is often above these cloud layers, no luck, it was a thick one. It's impossible to know how high these clouds go, so I gambled on a favorite local hike that is almost always above the clouds....It worked, I entered a dreamwold....
Although it truly does seem like a dreamworld, there is a very real natural phenomenon at work. It is called an inversion and they occur many places across the country/world. Although common in more moist climates (west coast of the US for example), there are fairly unusual in drier ones, like Colorado's front range. An inversion occurs when a warm layer of air gets above cooler lower levels, which is the opposite of normal temperature gradiants. When the cooler layer is trapped below, it is prevented from mixing with the layer above until it warms up (from the sun). All of this is a very rough way of describing how it is possible to rise above and enjoy the space above the clouds. To enter a dreamworld....
Below is a little video from the morning above the clouds....