15:06 Aspendell sits in a glacial valley; the steep sides on either side are glacial moraines, unsurprising as there is no shortage of those in the Sierra Nevada. As you know there's a couple prominent moraines at Hilton Creek and Convict Lake.
There was recently a beautiful house for sale in Aspendale that I would've loved to live in year round! It had a heated driveway and a heated two car garage. A beautiful view and a great lot as well.
12:00 SOME of it is rising air columns due to convection. i.e., the lapse rate of temperature of the air rising from the ground up to the level where the clouds condense. But You'll also notice that some of these cloud decks also align with the mountain ridges; and THAT process is known as _orographic lift_ -- air being forced up from the valley floor to the ridgetops due to air moving perpendicular to the topography of the mountain range. Either way, the flat cloud ceiling is a nice, clear demarcation of what elevation at which the air gets cold enough for water vapor to condense into clouds.
The flat bottoms are due to the LCL..Lifting Condensation Level. This is the level at which rising air cools to the point where clouds begin to form....
Warm air can 'dissolve' more water than colder air. When warm air rises to higher levels where the temperature is lower, at a certain height there will be saturation(100% humidity) and clouds ar formed. For given conditions this happens in an area at the same height, hence the flat bottom of the clouds.
