Stunning viral video shows Grand Canyon filled with ocean of clouds

A new viral video shows the Grand Canyon in rare form: filled to the brim with clouds. 

The video shows a full cloud inversion, which is when cold air gets trapped close to the ground by a layer of warm air, and the moisture turns into condensation, creating a sea of thick fog.

Clouds swirl and push up against the Canyon's Rim as if it were a sea shore. Those standing on the Rim feel as if they are walking on clouds.  

The Arizona Republic talked with the man behind the video, award-winning photographer and videographer Harun Mehmedinovic.

"It’s kind of like another planet, practically, the way it looks," he said.

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A year and a half to catch

Mehmedinovic said he has visited Grand Canyon National Park about 30 times since December 2015 to capture footage for the video, but only caught a full cloud inversion once. 

"That was purely luck, to be honest," he said. "You didn’t feel the depth of the Canyon because the fog reached basically the Rim, so it got up as high as where I was standing. It was a little surreal."

He currently lives in Flagstaff and is an assistant professor of practice in Northern Arizona University's Creative Media & Film and Photography program. 

The inversion lasted almost a full day, so he was able to shoot video from multiple spots on the Canyon's South Rim, he said. 

"I found it a little funny, seeing the tours coming by, all of them were really angry they couldn’t see the Canyon and I kept telling them, 'What you’re seeing here is so much cooler,' " Mehmedinovic said, laughing. 

His time-lapse video of the phenomenon has been viewed millions of times and shared by outlets and organizations including the Washington Post and Greenpeace since it first premiered on BBC Earth earlier this month. 

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Found through a passion for dark skies

Mehmedinovic and friend Gavin Heffernan are founders of Skyglow, a project exploring the effects of light pollution. 

"I grew up in rural Bosnia and when I was there one of the things we always talked about was how beautiful the night skies were," he said.

He grew to miss them while living in Los Angeles. While traveling, he would stop in northern Arizona or southern Utah just to see the starry sky. 

"I think you can, with confidence, say my favorite part of the world is the Colorado Plateau because it is absolutely stunning," he said. 

The International Dark-Sky Association named Grand Canyon National Park a provisional International Dark-Sky Park last year, which is part of why Mehmedinovic has been visiting it so often. 

MORE:Grand Canyon gets provisional dark-sky status

"The primary goal of ours is to get people educated about the night sky," he said. "Part of what we want people to do is be inspired and see it for themselves, and be aware of how they use light and cities and towns use light."

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