Our friends at “The Weather Shop” have invited members of the Cloud Appreciation Society to their “Winter Weather Wonderland” on Saturday, 4th December between 10am and 4pm.

The Weather Shop is a great location for that speacial or interesting gift for Christmas including complete weather stations, weather forecasters, traditional barometers and more. You can call into their East Sussex store for technical advice and demonstrations or visit their website here

Daniele Siebenhaar's A-Z of clouds

Cloud Appreciation Society member Danièle Siebenhaar who hails from Switzerland has been searching out a cloud alphabet. She has been hunting clouds in the shape of letters and has now found all of them, from A to Z.

Danièle uses her images to produce birthday cards for friends and family. We congratulate her on her achievement, and think that she should release the images as a typeface – that way, we can use it instead of Helvetica when we next send out the Cloud Appreciation Society newsletter.

Her cloud alphabet was reported in the UK’s Metro newspaper and the Swiss newspaper, Tages-Anzeiger. Proud as she is of her collection, Danièle insists that some of her letters don’t look as clear as she’d like, and so she has vowed to continue her important alphabetic quest.

Franz Ossing of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Pieter Roelofs of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam have collaborated to produce an in-depth analysis of Hendrick Avercamp’s work focusing mainly on his skies and the weather depicted in his paintings.

“Hendrick Avercamp almost invariably painted or drew calm and stable weather conditions with stratiform clouds”.

“His painting ‘Enjoying the Ice’ which was done c. 1610-20 shows a layer cloud with cumuliform heaps which meteorologically can be identified as a stratocumulus near sunset”

The full article can be found here and is extremely insightful and informative – well worth taking a few minutes to delve into.

August this year saw Cloud Appreciation Society member Ron Bishop visit The Cloud Bar at Anderby Creek on the east coast of Lincolnshire, we believe Ron to be our furthest travelled international visitor to the Bar.

Ron is a pilot for Qantas airlines and lives near Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Whilst at the bar he was interviewed by Radio Lincolnshire and gave a fascinating insight into life as an airline pilot and his occupational involvement with, and leisure time interest in clouds.

Ron has submitted a number of photos for the gallery taken from his office window on the flight deck.

Lower cloud formations were not visible during the visit by Ron, Ian the society Photo Editor, and Ian’s Wife Carol, who he stayed over with in Lincolnshire, but high Cirrus and Cirrostratus were observed.

Cloud Appreciation Society member, Kate Jordan-Moore has drawn our attention to clouds being featured at the 12th edition of the Architecture Biennale of Venice.

The exhibition runs from 29th August to 21st November at the Giardini and other venues in Venice. ‘Cloudscapes’ is an indoor cloud created in an 800m2 room in the Venetian Arsenal and forms the central installation in this most prominent of spaces. It was created by German climate engineering company Transsolar and Tetsuo Kondo Architects.

You can see more about the installation here and watch a video here and a further link to images has been sent in by cloudspotter Peter Kaiser.

CAS founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney comments that this is not the first time that clouds have been employed in architecture. It was done most notably at the Swiss Expo in 2002 by the architects Diller and Scofidio who designed the Blur Building which consisted of a cloud created over a lake. You can see more about this here and watch a video of it here

This is the title of a insightful and entertaining article by Christopher Middleton included in the Daily Telegraph on 10th September 2010.

Christopher describes his visit to Britains first Cloud Bar at Anderby Creek near Skegness. He writes “Spend an hour on top of the Cloud Bar (no drinks, it’s a little fort) and you become an instant expert on telling your “altos” (four to six miles high) from your “cumulos” (anything lower). As for “cirros”, they don’t start until eight miles up, identifiable because of their, well, wispiness (cirrus in Latin means a strand of hair)”.

He also gives wide mention of the Cloud Appreciation Society and has some interesting and descriptive quotes from Gavin Pretor-Pinney, our photo gallery editor, Ian Loxley and CAS member Mike Rubin, a glider pilot from Hampshire.

The full article can be found here and includes some cloud definitions at the end.

BBC TV’s weatherman Richard Angwin will be attending a charity event in support of an orphanage in Southern India at St Michaels’ Church, Broad Street, Bath. The event will be held at 7.15pm on Saturday, 16th October 2010.

Richard will be talking about “50 years of TV weather” and there will be refreshments available.

Jamie Costello, Head of Physics at Sutton Grammar School and Cloud Appreciation Society member sent in this image of Cumulus at 20,000ft.

The photograph was taken by a group of children taking part in a school project. He says “It took a good deal of work to get this shot but it was worth it. Google Earth tends to take shots with clear sky. It is lovely to see some of the trails of clouds formed in some of the other photos.”

Sponsored by the Institute of Physics the students created the entire payload including flight computer which modulated a GPS signal into a de-codable radio signal. They also had sponsorship from the Dorking and District Radio society and a donation of batteries from Battery Force.

Jamie added “Although we found the payload, not everything worked and we are going to launch again soon- ish”.

You can see the full project details by clicking here

Karen Kingston, author of ‘Clear your Clutter with Feng Shui’, recently posted a blog entitled “Why cloud collecting can be good for you”. She describes the passtime as “etherically refreshing and psychologically uplifting” – a very apt description!

She gives notible mention to both “The Cloud Collectors Handbook” and “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” although the main focus of the article is how clouds affect our mood on a day to day basis. She writes “looking up is good for you. Just the simple act of looking up when you feel down changes your psychological condition and raises your energy. And developing a relationship with the skies above allows your consciousness to expand to fill bigger spaces and your creativity to soar.”

It’s an inspired and uplifting article. Well worth a read

Radio 4’s ‘So You Want to be a Scientist’ NLC (Noctilucent Cloud) project brings together amateur Welsh scientist John Rowlands, 41, based on Anglesey, with The University of Bath’s Professor Nick Mitchell and his atmospheric research team. John’s entry was one of four finalists chosen by a panel of eminent scientists from over 1300 entries.

Bath University is providing access to the latest VHF radar, based in Sweden and NASA satellite observations to measure wind speeds and temperatures in the mesosphere, where NLC form, which lies some 50 miles (82km) above the earth – about 10 times higher than the highest normal weather clouds. The experiment will try to predict the onset of a cold phase of the 5-day planetary wave, a huge oscillation in winds within the mesosphere that may influence the occurrence of NLC. Later in the summer, John and Nick will try to predict when NLC might form,
and the BBC’s weather service will run a noctilucent cloud forecast on suitably clear nights. They aim to get as many people as possible out under the night sky and enjoying one of nature’s most beautiful and eerie sights.

NLC are predominantly seen in the northern and north-eastern part of the sky from late May until early August each year. The mesosphere is the coldest part of the earth, dipping to about -150 degrees Celsius. NLC ice crystals most likely nucleate on meteoric dust particles, as
this is where shooting stars burn-up as they enter the earth’s atmosphere.

The image above is of sealions and antenna is a VHF radar used to measure the wind velocity within the mesosphere. This one is in Antarctica, but an identical unit based in northern Sweden will be used for the BBC experiment.

There is a Facebook Page (BBC controlled) about the experiment here and the University of Bath Research pages can be found Visit the website here

Jets and turboprop aircraft leave unusually shaped clouds in their wakes. (Credit: Alan Sealls)

Society member David Benn recently came across this article on the Science Daily website.

Mysterious clouds are produced when aircraft inadvertently cause rain and snow. This cloud ‘seeding’ is caused when the aircraft climbs or descends in certain atmospheric conditions and causes narrow bands of rain or snow to form.

This phenomenom has triggered speculation and wonder whenever the blue-sky holes have been sighted, even as far back as the 1940s.

The full article can be found here and is well worth a read!

There are also some very good photographs of hole punched clouds here – thanks to Glenys Chew for this link.

Undulatus Asperatus was first identified last year by Cloud Appreciation Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and is currently being researched by Reading University.

The US National Weather Service writes:

“Undulatus asperatus (or alternately, asperatus) is a rare, newly recognized cloud formation . . . The clouds are most closely related to undulatus clouds. Although they appear dark and storm-like, they tend to dissipate without a storm forming. The ominous-looking clouds have been particularly common in the Plains states of the United States, often during the morning or midday hours following convective thunderstorm activity.”

You can read more and see some very good photograps here

Kristin Nielsen has drawn our attention to this wonderfully relaxing website. Add gentle rain to your environment. Enhance your music. Sleep Better. Relax.

Listen here and play your favourite music simultaneously

Sunday 6 June – 1.30pm to 4.30pm

Bruce Castle Museum invites you to join them for this fun and celebratory afternoon to launch the film of Luke Howard and the Clouds (kindly supported by OPAL). Indulge yourself with cloud-themed food and drink, whilst meeting Luke Howard and finding out about his life. You can even have a go at being a cloud watcher, learn how to identify the clouds by their names and predict the weather. Find out too how to make a cloud using ice! And be inspired to create your own cloud artwork with our local artist. Free and lots of fun for all the family.

Full details can be found here

Before

After

Paul Western shares our affinity for the sky and when he came across a burnt out car in his local woods decided to improve upon the eyesore by painting it with a sky pattern.

A very artistic and interesting way to improve the view!

Amateur photographer Mike Davies from Cadoxton Neath, has always been interested in photography since a very young child, and loves to take photographs of weather, the wilder the better, but he also looks to the skies for interesting cloud formations which he often gets screened on BBC Wales and ITV1 Wales along with them being screened on the weather slot on NBC Augusta.

He has also been a loyal member of the “Cloud Appreciation Society” since its concept where members from all over the world send in photographs of unusual cloud formation.

Mike was approached by the magazine Nature Geoscience for a cloud photograph which they spotted on the Cloud Appreciation Society forum for publication on the front cover of their April edition which is available in book shops and on line.

Nature Geoscince mentions the cloud on the front cover as:

“Ice clouds in the tropical tropopause layer have a key role in dehydrating air that is entering the stratosphere. Cloud-chamber measurements suggest that their high humidity can be explained if heterogeneous ice nucleation on glassy aerosols is a significant nucleation mechanism in this region. The image shows cirrus clouds over Neath, South Wales, UK. Image by Mike Davies.”

Mike tells us he is on cloud nine over this wonderful scoop and here is Mike “reaching for the skies”

You can see the front cover here

Cloud enthusiast John Rudolph has brought to our attention this wonderful website showing a collection of cloud structures from space. It also has detailed information about the formations.

The website states that while observing the Earth from the height of 500-5000 km it is possible to notice that the cloudy envelope of the planet is a ranked rather than a chaotic accumulation of clouds as far as it concerns their forms. These forms either repeat themselves or differ but in any event they reflect definite process taking place in the atmosphere. The outward appearance of CS remains invariable within a year and on the whole does not depend on their geographical location.

You can read more and enjoy the site here

Cloud Appreciation Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney adds “this is a fantastic new perspective for members to look at”

Cloud Appreciation Society Member, Brian Tunnard would like to extend an invitation to other members & anyone else who likes flying stuff, to join his newly formed Cloud Hoppers Forum on Yahoo. It’s free, and is a place where you can share your opinions on any topic you like, but obviously, mainly about Flying stuff.

Here is the link to it The Cloud Hoppers Paramotor Club (Yahoo Forum)

This exhibition at the Bruce Castle Museum, Lordship Lane, London, N17 8NU tells the life and achievements of Tottenham Local Hero Luke Howard, the Father of Meteorology and the Namer of the Clouds. Amongst the museum’s own exhibits on display are three of Luke Howard’s own watercolours of clouds – which are rarely seen on public show – and also a portrait in oils of Luke by John Opie (kindly on loan from the Royal Meteorological Society). Other items have been borrowed by various members of the Howard family and local Quakers.

The exhibition runs until 19th December 2010. It has something for everyone and it will be used by schoolchildren in particular. A lively film has been produced to accompany the exhibition about the Clouds and Luke Howard, with the generous support of the OPAL project and Imperial College London; it was directed by Anna Slingo; a current member of the Howard family – Oliver Howard – is one fo the film’s voiceovers. There is also programme of events at the museum over the year to celebrate Luke Howard – see here for up-to-date information of forthcoming events. The exhibition and the associated educational programme has been kindly supported by the Royal Society as part of its Local Heroes Programme to commemorate the Society’s 350th anniversary.

Open Wednesday to Sunday 1 – 5pm (for general public; groups may book at other times – contact the museum for further details)

A History of the Sky is a dynamic, time-lapse visualization of the sky for an entire year.

Time-lapse movies give us a glimpse of events that are continually occurring around us, but far too slowly to observe directly. A History of the Sky reveals the rhythms of weather, the lengthening and shortening of days, and other atmospheric events on an immediate aesthetic level: the clouds, fog, wind, and rain form a rich visual texture, and sunrises and sunsets cascade across the screen.

The project is located in San Francisco, CA and more information about it, including longer movies and technical details, can be found here

Patti Miller, member number 11465 wrote to us recently. In the 1960’s she was the Founder of her own cloud appreciation society. Membership consisted of herself and her sister, although she also claimed at the time that her brother, Tim Miller, was the best cloud and sky painter in Australia. His work can now been seen at the Rockley Studio, NSW, Australia.

A video has been made of the Year of Sundown skies/clouds that Tim painted – 365 Days, 365 Paintings and can be viewed here

Cloud lovers in Lincolnshire will be pleased to know that The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust has made a significant step in conserving the wild coast of Lincolnshire with the acquisition of land near Anderby Creek.

This area of Lincolnshire is renowned for its flat landscapes which allows for a 360 degree view of the sky and apparently infinite horizons. Some of the development is near the Anderby Cloud Bar area and all along that coast.

The full story and details of their plans can be seen here

Contributed by David Fiddimore: member 2126/ Edinburgh – 2nd December 2009

Film: general release November 2009

Cloud spotters may derive particular pleasure from the cloud busting scene in the 2009 film of Jon Ronson’s book “The Men Who Stare at Goats”. Ronson is a journalist and “Goats” followed his very successful book “Them” – a hilariously irreverent series of investigations into popular conspiracy theories. “Goats” – a detailed investigation, if not exactly a true story – illustrates what happens when the lunatics take over the asylum. The asylum in this case is the US military, and the lunatics a group of senior officers who came to believe in the possibility of raising a battalion of super soldiers with psychic powers – the First Earth Battalion – who adopted the philosophy of the Jedi Warrior from “Stars Wars.” Parts of their psychic training included “cloud busting” by staring at clouds, and stopping the hearts of goats by staring at them. (Neither the film nor the book point out that clouds are perfectly capable of busting on their own, and that the strain of goats on which they experimented happened to a be a particularly highly strung breed, known to collapse unconscious if someone so much as claps their hands in the same room!) I chuckled all the way through the film – it’s a bit of an ensemble piece – watching George Clooney, Ewan Macgregor and Jeff Bridges act their socks off. Enjoy the short cloud busting scene while you can, or wait until next year and put a copy of the DVD in a cloud spotter’s Xmas stocking. And remember; don’t begin to worry until the goats start staring back at you!! Happy Cloud busting!!

You can view the YouTube trailer here

Gavin Pretor-Pinney adds that there is a history of cloud-busting. One person who claimed to be able to do it was Rolf Alexander

Cloud Appreciation Society member, Deepak Chowdhury has recently published a Limited Edition Art Collection entitled “A Walk in the Clouds”

It consists of ninety plates of original photographs taken during his travels to different corners of the world.

You can see a video version of the book here

Chris Jackson of Wellington drew our attention to this strange cloud formation that was seen over Island Bay.

Lenticular clouds or Altocumulus standing lenticularis, like this one are stationary clouds that result from strong winds over rugged terrain and form at high altitudes.

Lenticular clouds are common around the Wellington region. They can generally be seen over Mt Orongorongo in the Rimutaka Range.

You can see the full article here

Nicky Schroder, member 8032 has drawn our attention to this article in the BBC news.

This unconventional structure was originally envisaged as a centre piece of London’s Olympic village and has been shortlisted in a competition set up by London Mayor Boris Johnson who has committed to build a tourist attraction in the Olympic Park “with a legacy for the east end of London”

The giant “digital cloud” would “float” above the London skyline and would include 120m tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles used to display images and data.

The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used as an observation deck and park.

Funds to build The Cloud would be raised by ‘micro-donations’ from millions of people. “It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told the BBC.

“We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

The size of the structure will evolve depending on the number of contributions, he said.

For more information about The Cloud and how to make a donation can be found here

Corina Duyn, a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society has written to let us know that she has published a book entitled “Cirrus Chronicles – Landing in Ballynelligan”.

It is a story about a Cloud Fairy who lives on Cloud Nine, and lands by accident in Ballynelligan, near Lismore in Ireland. It is Magic Realism for ages 8-10 and for all the other children between 4 and 104!

You see sample pages of the book and purchase it through her website

We were sent a photo of a luminous ring-shaped cloud hovering over the Kremlin in Moscow recently. A video of this cloud was posted on YouTube and it soon became a world news story, prompting many to claim that it was of a supernatural nature or a UFO or some sinister government-sponsored experiment.

The story appeared in newspapers around the world, all of which reported the exact same story (e.g. in the UK: The Sun, The Daily Mail, Metro; in the US: New York Daily News; in China: China Daily News). An unnamed Russian meteorologists was quoted, saying ‘This is a purely optical effect, although it does look impressive.’

We are stunned that no one knows that this is a straightforward and fairly common cloud formation, called a fallstreak hole. It is not an optical effect, nor is there anything paranormal about it. We wrote a Cloud of the Month about it a few years back. There are tonnes of photos of fallstreak holes on our photo gallery, sent in by members.

Have journalists stopped bothering to ask questions before printing a story? Can the so-called meteorologist really not know that fallstreak holes form quite regularly all around the world? Clearly, our mission to persuade the world to look up and notice the clouds is far from over.

Noctilucent clouds float much higher than other clouds, allowing them to shine when the sun is below the horizon.

The New Scientist reports that an experiment aimed at creating an artificial noctilucent cloud at the edge of space could shed light on the mysterious high-altitude objects. At the end of September a rocket was launched to create the artificial cloud.

To read the full report, view the gallery and see a video of the experiment click here

The Ocean Youth Trust are a youth charity dedicated to getting young people out on the water sailing and have a 68 foot oyster ketch Lord Rank on which they do it.

They are now offering cloud watching sailing trips with a discount for Cloud Appreciation Society members. To make a voyage viable the Trust would need 12 people who would like to take part. This can be for an afternoon, day, or longer depending on what you are interested in doing. If you are intested please contact the Trust directly and they will collate the enquiries into a database and once they reach 12 they will then identify the voyage date for that group.

Ben Craig (Youth Development Coordinator) of the Ocean Youth Trust Ireland said “We are of course very interested in clouds as weather dictates when and where we can go with our yacht, so we would love to have a group of people onboard who care as much about the weather as we do.”

If you are interested in taking part please contact Ben via their website www.oyti.org

Russ Clark of Arizona, USA was sent this video by his daughter who lives in the LA Basin.

The footage was shot by Dan Black from his vantage point at Tarzana, California.

Gavin Pretor- Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society advises us that it shows a pyrocumulus cloud — a sort of cloud that can form over forest fires, due to all the heat and moisture that they throw up into the atmosphere.

The full video can be seen here

An art project exploring the process of ‘cloud seeding’.

Australian Newspapers cover recent sightings of the Morning Glory Clouds.

The technical names for cloud formations are conventionally Latin words chosen to match characteristic shapes but The Chambers Dictionary knows that there are other ways of talking about clouds.

In their latest blog they talk about ‘goats hair’ and ‘mairs-tails’ and the poetry of clouds as used by Joni Mitchell and Shakespeare…

They also make reference to the new cloud classification. It is a shame though that they didn’t talk more about the use of clouds as a negative metaphor in English especially since this is the sort of thing we need to stand up against!

You can read the full blog here

Lifesquared have just made their new leaflet “10 Things to do instead of shopping” available as a free download for a limited period.

They have included a mention of Cloudspotting. The leaflet can be downloaded here

Cloud Appreciation Society member Robert Woodward, an amateur photographer, has just recently created a photography book called “Clouding About” which contains various cloudscape photographs taken over the past year and a half, at different places around the world.

Robert says “It is by no means a completely polished piece of work but I would like to do some shameless promotion to fellow cloud lovers and if possible get some votes for the competition that it’s in”.

He points out that this version will become a collectors edition and won’t be in print for very long.

To see more about this book and cast your vote please visit here

WORKSHOPS, TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS 8th to 23rd August 2009…

This summer the National Trust’s Tattershall Castle will be dramatically transformed by a team of exceptional artists including video makers, textile printers and landscape designers. Newly commissioned art works will spread throughout the building’s vast empty paces including the turreted rooftop and gardens.

Cloud Spotting
On Sunday, 16th August, Ian Loxley the Photo Gallery Editor for the Cloud Appreciation Society will take you on an informal tour of the afternoon sky. You will learn how to identify the common cloud types as well as many rare and unusual clouds. A gentle paced walk and talk, this is an opportunity to relax, look up and marvel at the Lincolnshire sky.
2pm – 3pm FREE. Booking essential – please call 01526 342543 to book a place or view details of other events here

Partly Cloudy is the new short film by Pixar. It was directed by Peter Sohn a Pixar animator who also provided the voice for Emile in Ratatouille.

The story revolves around Gus, a grey cloud who, with the other cloud people, creates the babies that the stork delivers to earth. He specialises in scultping ‘dangerous’ babies and as his creations become more and more lively his stork partner, Peck, has to work harder and harder…

Read a review here

We all agree that clouds add beauty and interest to the sky – but what about the clouds we can’t see?

Sub-visible cirrus clouds cover approximately 80% of the tropical Western Pacific but are too faint to be seen from the ground. Scientists need Lidar (laser-based radar) and other instruments to track them although they may be seen edge-on as a faint presence from the air.

As these clouds are not currently used in models for climate change meteorologists need to answer the question of how these huge, invisible clouds affect infra-red radiation.

Read the full article on Subvisible Clouds on the Guardian website.

Russia’s Sarychev Peak Volcano erupted for the first time in 20 years on 12th June 2009. This photograph was taken by the Astronauts aboard the International Space Station who where flying directly overhead.

It has been called one of the most dramatic Earth-science photo’s ever taken from space and shows the pillar of ash punching a massive hole in the cloud layer. The misty ‘cap’ on the ash plume is thought to be water condensing from air shoved upward by the rising ash column, similar to the iridescent pileus clouds.

You can read the full article on the spaceweather.com website.