Upside Down Lightning Over Penang, Malaysia.

This month’s image shows a dramatically different perspective on lightning, which here appears to be travelling upwards within the Cumulonimbus storm cloud. This type of lightning is sometimes described as spider or anvil crawler lightning, and was spotted over Penang, Malaysia, by Mike Sharp. He describes the area as “most exciting weatherwise”. How could we disagree?

Photograph © Mike Sharp

Landscape Treks are a small company who guide people to wild locations in the UK’s mountains to experience superb scenery, capture stunning images and above all, enjoy being in the great outdoors.

If you would like to join one of their treks specifically to enjoy being guided to some remote locations and enjoy some cloud watching please contact them via their website.

A Crocheted Cumulus from 'Cummulus' at the Paris experimental sci-art gallery, Le Laboratoire

Barbara Felicetti of Ardmore, PA recently drew our attention to this article on the New Scientist website by their CultureLab editor, Kate Austen who was lucky enough to visit the experimental sci-art gallery “Le Laboratoire” in Paris to view these beautiful crocheted cumulus clouds.

“Lit from within and above, the swathes of crocheted white wool hang from the ceiling to just half a metre above the ground, casting familiar shadows on the gallery floor. The fluffy cashmilon wool chosen by the artist, Argentinean architect Ciro Najle, works well for cumulus clouds – the puffy ones that can precede thunder storms, and are precursors to the godfather of clouds, the cumulonimbus” she says.

You can read the full New Scientist article here and see details of the exhibition here.

Cloud enthusiast HelmutVölter recently contacted us about an exhibition he curated for The Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland entitled “Cloud Studies – The Sicentific View of the Sky”. The exhibition is currently running until 12th February 2012.

The exhibition contains a range of original cloud photographs that have been produced and used in many different ways. There are cloud atlases (the first International Cloud Atlas from 1896), cloud photo albums, single photogrpahs, hand books, press photographs, magazines and films. The Japanese physicist, Masanae Abe observed and filmed the clouds around Mt Fuji in the 1930′s.

You can see more about the exibition here.

I see a crystal city all of blue moonlight and fashioned out of air;
I see the men who walk there and they are beautiful and wear gold on their hair;
I see their ships of Elven light
Sailing in the silver night,
Calling to me ….
Above the hills of Heaven, and I’ll climb them when my soul is ready to fly.

Oh listen to the starlight as it whispers through the canyons of the clouds;
Moonsilver stairways, soft-echoing to the lilting singing sounds;
Laughter and feasting there,
Voices as clear as air
Singing to me ……
Oh am I dreaming in my longing for the legend to be real?

Oh I can dwell no longer in this shadowland where the rain is coldly falling;
New moon on Magonia, ethereal, to my heart is calling;
Oceans of clouds away,
Songs of a brighter day
Call me away …….
I hear the Elfin music of fair Magonia, and Earth is nothing but a dream;
I cannot look behind me, for Earth is but the dark side of a dream.

© Indrani Ananda

Iridescent Lenticular clouds over Mount Rainier

This month’s image shows the beautiful effect that can result from the sunlight shining through thin parts of a cloud where the tiny droplets or ice crystals all have similar sizes. The sunlight can be ‘diffracted’ as it passes around the miniscule particles. The result is that it is split into different wavelengths, which appear as the colours of the rainbow. This optical effect is called iridescence or irisation and tends to appear at the fringes of clouds. This fantastic example, captured by Ryan Verwest, shows iridescence in lenticular clouds, and was spotted over Mount Rainier, Washington, US.
Photograph © Ryan Verwest