Category: Attention All Cloudspotters

You can’t look around when you’re looking up, so we’ve had a look around for you.
If you have cloud news that you think we should include here, please email it to us at: hello@cloudappreciationsociety.org.

LUMINOSITY

Kathy Wilson, Member 58,037 recently told us about an exhibition by Andy Eccleshall entitled “Luminosity” that is showing at the Seattle Art Museum Gallery until 31st March 2024.  Andy was previously a muralist but is now focusing on cloud art and with pastoral landscapes to the far reaches of the sky, Luminosity spotlights his work.

Read more about the exhibition on the My Edmonds News website

Cumulus Clouds Disappear During Solar Eclipses

A recent study has shown that Cumulus clouds begin to disappear during partial solar eclipses. The study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment in early February 2024, used satellite cloud measurements from three solar eclipses between 2005 and 2016, and the results showed that Cumulus clouds over land began to dissipate when around 15% of the Sun’s disc was obscured by the Moon. This is because Cumulus clouds feed off columns of rising air, called thermals, and these rising thermals are formed by the heat of the Sun shining down onto the ground. As the Sun begins to be obscured, less of its heat reaches the ground, halting the formation of Cumulus clouds. This halting is, however, only temporary, for Cumulus begin to form once more after a solar eclipse has passed.

The findings of this study show that scientists may be underestimating the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth during solar eclipses, for low, thick clouds, such as Cumulus, tend to reflect solar radiation and have a cooling effect on the planet. That solar eclipses affect cloud cover has implications with proposed climate engineering techniques. As Victor Trees, one of the researchers who worked on the study, said: ‘This could be a warning for climate engineering. If we eclipse the Sun in the future with technological solutions, it may affect the clouds. Fewer clouds could partly oppose the intended effect of climate engineering, because clouds reflect sunlight and thus actually help to cool down the Earth.’

To find out more about the relationship between Cumulus clouds and solar eclipses, you can read this article published by Phys.org (which includes a direct link to the study in full).

Image: NASA

Clouds of Sand Disovered on Mysterious Exoplanet

The English word ‘cloud’ stems from the Old English clūd, meaning ‘boulder’. It is therefore fitting that the clouds on distant exoplanet WASP-107b are made of particles of silicate – minerals that are often the main constituents of sand. It is thought that the sand on WASP-107b behaves in a way reminiscent of Earth’s own water cycle: particles of silicate form clouds in the upper atmosphere. These particles then rain back down into the hotter layers of the planet’s atmosphere below, where they evaporate. In its gaseous phase, the silicate then rises and condenses back into the solid particles of cloud. This process then repeats in cycles, rather like the water cycle on Earth – but with sand!

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was used to carry out this research. It is the first time the chemical composition of another planet’s clouds has been detected, and its findings provide a unique insight into both the differences and similarities that can exist on planets other than our own.

You can read more about these clouds of sand in this NPR article.

Image: What would clouds of sand look like? Nobody knows, but probably not like the above since its an upside-down photo of the Sahara Desert. Image © Pierre André CC BY-SA 4.0.

Collecting Clouds. Catches from Heaven on Paper

An exhibition showing clouds portrayed in both art and photographic form is currently happening in Zürich, Switzerland, running until March 10, 2024.

A collaboration between the Image Archive and the Graphic Collection of ETH Zürich, the exhibition covers different printmaking techniques involved in cloud imagery, as well as asking philosophical questions about the very nature of capturing images of clouds. As the official press release says, ‘Constant movement and ever-changing form are of the essence of clouds. Their mobility and variety make them impossible to pin down – yet, by the same token, clouds can be anything: from the sublime embodiment of longing and an ominous portent, to the dwelling of the gods, to a mere accumulation of condensed water. But if the essence of clouds consists in their perpetual motion and formal metamorphosis, how can they be captured in an image?’

You can find out more about this exhibition by visiting the ETH Zürich’s website.

The exhibition is being held at:
ETH Zurich
Graphische Sammlung
HG E 52
Rämistrasse 101
8092 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 44 632 40 46
info@gs.ethz.ch

Image: Einsame Farm auf der öden Hochfläche Südafrikas bei Kimberley by Arnold Heim
© ETH Library, Image Archive



This is Steve

Noreen Reilly, Member 48,298, sent the link to an article published on the CNN website about the purple-pink streak of light that looks like an aurora when it hovers over the Norther Hemisphere but is in fact, something completely different known as ‘Steve’.

The two aurora scientists mentioned in the article, Dr Elizabeth MacDonald and Dr Eric Donavan, have both been experts on Cloud Appreciation Society Sky Holidays to view the aurora in Canada.

You can read the full article and see more images on the CNN website

From Iowa to England, the World’s Newest Cloud Is Challenging the Status Quo

Emily Fischer is an editorial fellow with Midstory, a non-profit ‘thinkhub’ in the Midwest which encourages the exchange of ideas and envisions the future of the region through multimedia storytelling.  She contacted us as she was working on a story about how asperitas clouds have been seen across the Midwest and wanted to include information about the cloud’s official recognition.  Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney was pleased to help and worked on the story with Emily, sharing with her the background to its recognition and describing it as “Very much like the surface of the ocean when you’re underneath, looking up. But not on a kind of calm day with regular waves — more on a chaotic, choppy day”.  Emily told us “I’m so honored to have your perspective as an integral part of its discovery!”

The article is very detailed and well written.  You can read it in full here 

Sing Blues in Grey – an Exhibition of the Clouds by Jon Schueler

Sing Blues in Grey, an exhibition showing off thirty paintings and watercolours of the moody cloud-heavy Scottish skies by American artist Jon Schueler, is running in Eton, Berkshire, England from 28th September until 5th November, 2023.

For more information on how to attend this event, please visit the official exhibition’s website via this link.

Image: © Jon Schueler

The Disappearing Clouds on Neptune – and the Reason Why…

We tend to think of clouds as being an Earth-based phenomenon, but they also exist on other planets. On Neptune, the Solar System’s furthest planet from the Sun, cloud coverage appears to correlate with the 11-year solar cycle. The blue ice giant planet is usually covered in bands of white cloud, which become more frequent two years after the solar cycle’s peak, where the Sun’s activity increases. However, since 2019, the clouds have been disappearing, with latest imagery from the Keck II telescope showing clouds being found only on the planet’s southern pole. ‘This is extremely exciting and unexpected, especially since Neptune’s previous period of low cloud activity was not nearly as dramatic and prolonged,’ said Erandi Chavez, of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard-Smithsonian (CfA).

To discover more about this fascinating finding, you can read this article published on NASA’s website.

Observations of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope showing the waxing and waning of the planet’s cloud cover over the 11-year solar cycle, with 2020’s photograph showing less cloud cover than in previous years.

Images: NASA, ESA

La tête dans les nuages

Clotilde Wang, Member 37,435, recently told us about a French broadcast entitled “Head in the Clouds”.  The translated programme description states:

“At the beginning of autumn, the course of the clouds parades, carrying showers and clearings. If we cannot grasp them with our hands, we can nevertheless grasp them through the arts and sciences. From the mapping of clouds, which reveals their territories to us, to meteorological engineering, which makes it possible to make rain fall, through their pictorial and poetic study, we learn to know them better”.

You can listen to the broadcast here

Image: Cirrus over Rossmoyne, City of Canning, Western Australia, Australia © Rosa Bud

Noctilucent Clouds & Climate Change: a Potential Link

Noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds, are ice-crystal formations found in a region of the upper atmosphere called the mesosphere. They form at altitudes of 50 miles (80 km), right up near the fringes of Space, making them Earth’s highest clouds. Named with the Latin for ‘night shining’, they have a bluish glow as they catch the light when the rest of the sky is dark. The clouds are seen only during twilight hours when the Sun is below the horizon (between 6° and 16° below, to be precise). They are only visible during summertime, and from mid-to-high latitude regions of the world.

Over the past few decades, sightings of noctilucent clouds have become more frequent. They have been seen from more extensive regions, appearing further south in the Northern Hemisphere, for instance. It is possible the increasing frequency of this mysterious and ghostly formation is a consequence of our warming climate.

You can read more about noctilucent clouds and their possible connections to climate change in this BBC Sky at Night Magazine article.

Photograph: noctilucent clouds spotted over Schleiz, Germany by Juergen Klimpke.

NASA Mission to Study Ice Clouds

Marilyn Murphy, artist and CAS Member 41,144, shared with us the news that  Vanderbilt University’s Ralf Bennartz is to lead a NASA mission to study ice clouds.  This is a NASA satellite mission, supported by a grant of up to $37 million, aimed at better understanding Earth’s high-altitude ice clouds. Ralf Bennart, Stevenson Chair and professor of earth and environmental sciences, will lead the mission, which will underscore Vanderbilt’s cutting-edge contributions to comprehending our planet’s climate.

You can read the full article on the Vanderbilt University website.

Weatherwise Annual Photo Competition

ATTENTION ALL AMATEUR WEATHER PHOTOGRAPHERS! Enter your best weather photos in the 2023 Weatherwise Photography Contest. Winners will be featured in the September/October 2023 issue. One grand prize, one first prize, two second prizes, three third prizes, and several honourable mention prizes will be awarded.* All winners receive a one-year online subscription to the only magazine about the weather – Weatherise. SEND IN YOUR ENTRIES TODAY!

Submit your entry here

Landscape Stories – Exhibition

Heike Negenborn, Member 8,845, an artist from Windesheim, Germany currently has a solo exhibition entitled “Landscape Stories” at the Galerie Hübner & Hübner, Frankfurt.  It’s running from 17th March to 22nd April 2023.

The subtitle of this Netscape is “Changing Landscape”. The artist explaineds “In the series of monumental overview landscapes, which were awarded the Palatinate Prize for Fine Arts and the Wilhelm Morgner Prize, I combine cloud and earth fragments with perspectively fanned-out grids, which transform into digital pixels dissolve and mutate into network landscapes, into Netscapes. The reshaping of the cultural landscape is underpinned by the reduction of my otherwise strongly colored palette to black and white tones and by the depiction of the landscape as a construct. Clearly visible construction and perspective lines reveal my strategies and support the depth effect in the picture. The works deal with the relationship between nature, its image and its multimedia transfer possibilities.”

You can find out more about Heike and her work on her website

Luke Howard, The Namer of Clouds

Monday November 28, 2022 was the 250th anniversary of the birth of English chemist and amateur meteorologist Luke Howard, the man who named clouds. On a cold December evening in 1802, this modest young Quaker presented a lecture called ‘On the Modification of Clouds’ to members of his scientific debating club in London. Howard had loved the sky ever since he was a young child, and he proposed in his talk a system for naming the recognisable forms of clouds with Latin terms like those used for plants and animals. For millennia, a consistent and systematic way of referring to cloud types had eluded great minds. Many insisted clouds were too chaotic and ephemeral to be classified, or that naming them served no purpose. But the simple, science-based system of classification Howard proposed struck a chord not only with his audience that night but soon with an international scientific community and even with poets and artists. Luke Howard, much to his discomfort, became a celebrity across Great Britain and Europe. He was applauded for opening people’s eyes to the recognisable forms of the sky and for successfully arguing that Latin terms would provide a lexicon to ensure consistency across international weather observations. Howard’s naming system, now codified and maintained by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, still remains the official system used worldwide. This week we are theming our Cloud-a-Day emails on ‘Father of Meteorology’ Luke Howard to mark the influence he had on the sciences, the arts, and on everyday people looking up when he forged a new language for the sky.

This portrait of Luke Howard, likely painted by John Opie in c. 1807, is in the collection of The Royal Meteorological Society in Reading, England.

Photo © Derek Bayes. All rights reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images.

Luke Howard Week: Tuesday

In Luke Howard’s 1802 lecture ‘On the Modifications of Clouds’ he proposed three main cloud families, or ‘simple modifications’ as he called them, which he named Stratus, Cumulus, and…

Read more…

Luke Howard Week: Wednesday

‘But Howard gives us with his clear mind
The gain of lessons new to all mankind;
That which no hand can reach, no hand can clasp…

Read more…

Luke Howard Week: Thursday

Luke Howard was a tireless and disciplined weather observer who for decades kept daily records of his measurements in and around London. This diagram of the mean temperature throughout the…

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Luke Howard Week: Friday

The World Meteorological Organization – the official keeper of cloud classifications – has rigorously maintained the Latin naming system that Luke Howard first proposed in 1802. But nothing in the world of cloud is ever fixed, and so…

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Luke Howard Week: Saturday

The sky in this watercolour from the first half of the nineteenth century was painted by Luke Howard. He became adept at depicting cloudscapes to use for illustrating his talks and publications about…

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Luke Howard Week: Sunday

Attached high on the wall of a semi-derelict house at 7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham, London is an English Heritage blue plaque that reads, ‘The Namer of Clouds lived and died here.’ This was the home where Luke Howard spent…

Read more…

Canticle of Clouds Show at Pleiades Gallery in NYC

Ann Kraus, Member 48,329, is holding a solo show at Pleiades Gallery in NYC from November 29th to December 24th 2022.  She explains on her website  “Clouds are a key subject in my skycap paintings. These omnipresent and ethereal gifts of nature are dynamic, poetic and can sometimes mirror our own emotions. The clouds are constantly evolving as they are buffeted by the wind and add drama and clarity to our world at sunrise and sunset. Being focused and cloud aware is certainly a needed antidote for our downward gaze at our digital screens”.

Altocumulus lacunosus over Holy Ghost, San Miguel, New Mexico, US.

When Clouds Raise an Eyebrow

Edward Graham, editor of Weather, and Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Member 001), wrote the article “When Clouds Raise an Eyebrow – the case for a new supplementary cloud feature ‘Supercilium‘” to celebrate 250 years since the birth of Luke Howard.  Supercilium are short-lived cloud features, which appear in turbulent airflow over, and to the immediate lee of, steep mountain peaks during periods of strong mountain summit level winds.  The image shown here was used as our March 2022 Cloud of the Month.

Cloud Scanner – A Personal Cause

Artist, Justin Wiggan, has started a crowdfunding campaign to fund the creation of a Cloud Scanner device to turn the appearance of clouds into sounds and haptic feedback for visually and hearing impaired children.  He told us:

“The sky should be the most accessible thing of all so I’ll build a working prototype of a handheld device called a cloud scanner which reads clouds and converts the signal into sound which is then converted to a haptic signals which can be felt.

The funds will go on development of the tech , parts and testing so that children with sight impairment can hear and feel the clouds and allowing this accessibility to the sky for these children will have a major impact in wellbeing.

Climate action awareness sometimes forgets to include those who may be overlooked due to physical disabilities .

Cloud scanner allows a channel to trigger emotive and empathetic conversations leading to behaviour change in children that are sight impaired or blind. This gives a voice to those”.

You can see read more and see a video about his work on his CrowdFunder page

Travelling Yesterday’s Skies…

in the Wolking Experience*

Kariene van Steenoven, Member 59,569, describes herself as a wonderer and storyteller of the earth who designs installations so that people can time travel in nature.  Her latest walking experience shows yesterday’s skies and walking through them encourages participants to wonder more about today’s skies.  She is currently crowdfunding this idea to go to Ameland Art Month in November with 30 printed sky-frames. 

* ‘Wolk’ means ‘cloud’ in Dutch

If you’d like to make a donation please visit her crowdfunding page.

You can also see a short film to see how the wolking installation works on her Instagram account

Mount Rainier, An Eruption?

Fleur Flowers, Member 54,145, sent this article from cnet.com showing Mount Rainier appearing to erupt.  However, it was quick to reassure readers that all was well as the formation seen atop the volcano was actually a lenticular cloud created by moist air pushing over the top of the mountain.

You can read the full article and a brief video on the cnet.com website

“There’s Tur-Bul-Lance Up There”

Frank Swaringen, Member 59,459, recently wrote a children’s book entitled “There’s Tur-Bul-Lance Up There”.  It’s written for children aged 4-8 with a positive message, explaining to them in an imaginative, endearing and fictional way, why we see shapes in clouds.  It is published by Dorrance Bookstore and can be ordered from them or purchased online through Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Walmart

Jon Schueler: Reflections on the Sound of Sleat

Diana Ewer is curating an exhibition of Skyscape cloud paintings by American artist Jon Schueler (1916-1992) entitled “Reflections on the Sound of Sleat”. The exhibition will be at the Caledonian Club, London and will run from 29th September to 4th November 2022.

The official press release reads:

“Jon Schueler: Reflections on the Sound of Sleat” on view in the Caledonian Club’s newly renovated drawing room from 29th September presents a seminal exhibition of Scottish abstract skyscapes. Described as “A home away from home for Scots in London”, the club would undoubtably have appealed to the late American painter Jon Schueler (1916-1992) who was a Caledonophile at heart.

A member of the Second-Generation Abstract Expressionists, whose mentor at the California School of Fine Arts was Clyfford Still (1948-1950), Schueler, having achieved both critical and financial success in New York with the Leo Castelli Gallery, set off to the Western Highlands in 1957. Settling in the small fishing village of Mallaig, he found in the Scottish landscape, most notably in the Sound of Sleat’s weathering skies, a source of intense feeling and expression that would become a constant touchstone and enduring influence on his paintings. In 1970 Schueler returned, to establish a new studio at Romasaig, a former schoolhouse by the sea, just a mile from Mallaig. The artist would paint there year after year until his death in 1992.

These seven Romasaig skyscapes from the 1970s and 1980s are as vibrant as the day they were painted and can be interpreted as distillations of Schueler’s direct experience of the constantly shifting weather. These works are deeply personal, revealing through layer upon layer of paint, an artist who tirelessly dedicated himself to capturing the evocative and fleeting moods of the sky on canvas. “In Scotland, I have looked each day at the lonely horizon, at that line (or is it a line?) where the sea and the sky meet. I have tried to understand it and tried to know how to paint it and what the painting of it might mean. I have seen the light immediately above and I have seen the light immediately below. I have tried to understand the shadow and the reflection upon reflection.” I But these paintings also hold a universal appeal, especially resonating with those who are familiar with the ever-changing dramatic sea and skyscapes of the Isle of Skye and beyond.

“Building on the artist’s recent London retrospective in 2019 at Waterhouse & Dodd, it is an honour to show Jon Schueler’s paintings in the company of the Caledonian Club’s own fine art collection. We hope the show will encourage further interest in the artist’s work, and that Schueler’s skyscapes will strike a deep emotional connection with those familiar with the coast of the Western Highlands.”
Diana Ewer, Curator for the Jon Schueler Estate.

The Jon Schueler Estate is represented by Waterhouse & Dodd Fine Art, London & New York.
Running concurrently at their London gallery, 16 Saville Row, W1S 3PL “Coming up for air: an exhibition of paintings by Jon Schueler”, 30th Sept– 28th Oct, 2022, please contact: Jonathan.Dodd@waterhousedodd.com

Surreal Cloudscape Series

CGI artist and painter, Matt Wilson, has sent in his series Surreal Cloudscapes.  Matt created the CGI cloudscapes in the recent ‘Lightyear’ Pixar movie, but during Covid isolation he began experimenting with creating cloudscapes on his own.  He calls his art series Sentinels, and they were recently featured in the Solo Show in New York City. 

Matt explained to us how he goes about creating clouds on computers.  “Clouds are elusive creatures”, he told us, “and as such require a wide spectrum of methods to represent their forms and movement. Even with today’s massive computing power they still push the edge of the technology, which for me reiterates their magic out in the real world. In movies, television or games, any time you see a puff of smoke, or a cloud or fog or any “volumetric” effect, they are typically represented by something called “voxels”, or volume pixels. Essentially little cubes filled with a certain amount of “density” or a given substance (water droplets, smoke, etc)… often billions of them (yes that does take up a LOT of data storage).  You can stack those cubes into a shape by either sculpting it into place, like a sculptor with clay, or you can use the much more complex process of using physics simulations to choreograph the volume into place. Both are equally fun but the later of the two gives you the opportunity to try to understand the underlying physics”. 

We asked Matt to explain how he references real clouds when sculpting his digital ones.  “

Observation and understanding are my first steps,” he explained.  “Combing through the years of C.A.S. images, google image search and my edition of the cloud spotters guide is usually where I begin. I go about my simulation setups by trying to evaluate the source of humidity from the ground up and then the surrounding atmospheric conditions; temperature gradient as the cloud rises up in the air, sheering forces and turbulence. Mammatus undulatus is a great example of a cloud formation where the shape of the turbulence is much easier to visually see, relative to other more complex cloud types like cumulus fractus. You can think of the overall cloudscape as a recipe… a combination of several of types at various altitudes. You begin with a big cumulus congestus formation built using a simulation surrounded by some hand-placed, sculpted, cumulus humilis clouds and “ice the cake” with a layer of altostratus clouds that can be sculpted using some fractal math”. 

We think the clouds are really convincing and we’re so pleased that the real clouds on the CAS Photo Gallery have served as inspiration.

You can see more of Matt’s work on his website

From the art series “Sentinels” © Matthew Wilson
From the art series “Sentinels” © Matthew Wilson

Our Kickstarter to launch a ‘Memory Cloud Atlas’ for Cloud Appreciation Day

We have just launched a Kickstarter to create a website for Cloud Appreciation Day on Friday September 16th. The Memory Cloud Atlas will be a free resource for anyone, anywhere to share their sky on this day and the feelings it elicits in them. Help us record a worldwide snapshot of richly diverse perspectives on the sky and preserve it as a record for the future. Please support this Kickstarter and bring people together by sharing their love of the sky.

Cloud Appreciation Day will be on Friday Sept 16th, 2022

Cloudspotting on Mars

NASA is researching clouds in the upper atmosphere of Mars and it needs your help to spot them.  If you’re interested in doing some extra-terrestrial cloudspotting, join in with NASAs Citizen Science project to help recognise the tell-tale signals of Martian clouds on the readings from the Mars Climate Sounder, an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  The clouds are likely composed of water ice and carbon dioxide ice.  Your input in spotting them from their satellite readings will help us better understand these Martian clouds.

More information can be found here

The arch shapes arise because the apparent altitude of the cloud changes as the spacecraft moves along its orbit as shown in the figure below on the left (Diagram of geometry from Sefton-Nash et al., 2012). As the spacecraft moves from point 0, to points 1, 2, and 3, MCS views a different part of the atmosphere (continuing to look at the limb) such that the apparent altitude of a cloud (z’) rises from the surface. The peak of the arch in altitude (point 3) represents the true altitude of the cloud. Once the spacecraft moves on to points 4 and 5, the cloud appears to descend in altitude, which completes the arch-like shape. 

‘Something in Common’ with the Los Angeles Public Library

The Cloud Appreciation Society is featured in an exhibition at the Los Angeles Public Library called Something in Common, which features societies and organisations around the world that bring people together for all the good stuff that comes with community.

Organised by Todd Lerew (Member 47,655), Library Foundation’s Director of Special Projects, the show includes in the CAS exhibit a changing display of the Cloud-a-Day that we send out to our subscribing members. It also features the story of how members of the Cloud Appreciation Society came together in 2017 to persuade the World Meteorological Organisation to accept the asperitas cloud as a new official classification, which led to it becoming the first new cloud type to be recognised since the 1950s. There’s a stunning projection of an asperitas time-lapse kindly contributed by storm chaser extraordinaire Mike Olbinski (Member 045). (Mike refers in his video to the cloud with the slightly different name ‘asperatus’, which is what we’d originally proposed for it before it became official.)

Something in Common is showing in the Getty Gallery of the Central Library, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, US until November 6th.

All photographs © Ian Byers-Gamber

Stratocumulus over the Caspian Sea

NASA’s Earth Observatory recently featured a peculiar occurrence of stratocumulus clouds over the Caspian Sea. 

Photographed using NASA’s MODIS satellite instrument, the cloud appears to have been a lover of the open seas.  Having appeared over the Caspian Sea, it drifted towards the coast of Makhachkala, Russia, where it dissipated upon reaching land. 

Read more on NASA Earth Observatory about the peculiar cloud over the Caspian.

Save 7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham

Ruth Richardson, Member 52,754, got in touch to ask members to sign a petition for the preservation of a house in North London, which was home to Luke Howard, the “Namer of Clouds”.  2022 is the 250th anniversary of Howard’s birth.  You can read more about him in a Cloud-a-Day that we published recently.  In 1802 Luke Howard proposed the system of using Latin names for clouds, many of which we still use today.  The home of the “father of meteorology”, as Howard is sometimes known, is in a state of semi-dereliction, and we believe that the developers responsible for the property should be forced to restore it before it deteriorates beyond repair. 

Please sign the petition to save 7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham.

Weatherwise Magazine Photography Contest

Attention all amateur weather photographers! Enter your best weather photos in the annual Weatherwise Photography Contest. Winners will be featured in the September/October issue of the coming year. One grand prize, one first prize, two second prizes, three third prizes, and several honorable mention prizes will be awarded. The grand prize winner will receive US$500 and all other winners receive a one-year subscription to the only magazine about the weather – Weatherwise. Send in your entries today!

The most recent contest issue is here and it is free to read.

Submit your entry here

Head in the Clouds short film

Cloud Appreciation Society Member 001, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, was interviewed for this short documentary exploring the significance of clouds for artists and scientists throughout history, and what they can tell us about the uncertain future of the earth’s climate. ‘Head in the Clouds’ was produced by John Bader, Yu Fu and William Hornbrook, known as Silk Productions, as part of the MSc Science Media Production course at Imperial College London.

‘Clouds’, an Essay by Kristina Machanic Goslin

Member 38,409, Kristina Machanic Goslin tells us how cloudspotting for her is an ever-present way to connect with nature

For so many people, nature has become a luxury. A privilege. Something reserved for those who can afford to jet off to their villas in the tropics, heli-ski in the Canadian Rockies, or sail away on their yachts. Getting into nature for most now requires getting AWAY from something else. Our jobs, suburban developments, and our insanely over-scheduled lives. This disconnect and restriction feeds directly into the sense of having no control over one’s dreams and desires. That we MUST push away our need for nature and beauty and freedom, because our lives demand focus elsewhere. Nature, however, has provided us with a constant gift, if we’d only learn where to look for it.

I’d always noticed clouds, often because I would tilt my gaze upward when I was stuck in traffic or seeking escape from whatever mundane constructed environment I was in. I love to see beauty in what’s around me, and clouds know no boundaries. I can look up and see something spectacular whether I’m on top of a mountain, in a city, or the supermarket parking lot. I can be rich or poor, able bodied or wheelchair bound, and clouds are there so long as I remember to look up. As the CAS Manifesto states, clouds are nature’s egalitarian poetry.

When I first began actively cloud spotting, my family and friends were amused by my obsession and somewhat bewildered at times by the excitement that would overtake me when spotting a rare formation. Now, as they too take note of the sky’s display, they tell me that I have literally changed their lives. How they look up and see what otherwise was an unnoticed backdrop to their daily tasks, but now is alive and dramatic and beautiful and ever-evolving. Much like we are… or should strive to be.

Clouds form due to disturbances in the atmosphere, colliding weather patterns, moisture and wind and electricity mingling and mixing to form a plethora of varying shapes and configurations. Some are predictable and stable. Others shift before you can settle your gaze to fully see them. They are immense and heavy, undulating and churning leaden grays and greenish blacks… or delicate gossamer ribbons woven through azure silk. Yet they all can appear above the same horizon. The canvas remains constant. Above the clouds the sky is steadfast. Blue, deep, endless. The clouds express the earth’s mood and they can do so with as much volatility as a teenager. There is only one constant when it comes to clouds… they will always change.

I find myself smiling a lot more now that I always have an eye on the sky. Spotting a rare and fleeting horseshoe vortex will make me gasp with excitement. A grin appears that didn’t need anyone else to put it there. Not even a happy memory. It’s simply my spirit reacting to something that makes me feel… good. Looking for these Easter Eggs in the sky has made every humdrum drive to do errands an opportunity to be reminded that something beautiful, powerful, and natural could appear at any moment.