Listen again to Head in the Clouds on Radio 3

Tim Oxton emailed us to tell us five cloud programmes airing on BBC Radio 3, called ‘Head in the Clouds’. They are part of the series called The Essay, and go out every night at 23.00 (GMT) on Radio 3 from 23rd to 27th February 2009.

If you miss the broadcasts, you can listen again for the seven days following broadcast:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hw8vj/episodes/2009

Each is a lucid and enlightening insight into the cultural significance of clouds throughout civilisation.

Here’s another fun way to sharpen up your cloud recognition skills.

It’s one of life’s little ironies that one of the most stunning cloud sequences on film appears in a Nazi propaganda film.

Thanks to a certain lipstick pitbull, the long-running debate about whether we are responsible for climate change has been given some high-profile coverage.

Listening to the news yesterday, you might have been forgiven for thinking it was April 1st, not September 1st.

Here’s the perfect thing for cloud lovers looking for some light relief.

Fans of the Clouds That Look Like Things section of our world-famous photo gallery may want to check out the Environmental Graffiti website.

Do you sometimes confuse your cirrus with your altostratus?

Our American members, and intrepid international travellers, may care to drop in on a cloud-friendly exhibition in the Cape Cod area.

The fantastic photos taken by our members have helped make our cloud gallery famous throughout the world.

Arguments still rage about whether NASA’s space programme has been worth all those billions, but you have to admit astronauts take great pictures.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief – cloudspotting has got the thumbs up from New York’s fashion elite.

Cirrus clouds are performing a disappearing act which is taking scientists by surprise.

If you were lucky enough to be off the coast of Mexico last month, you might have been treated to a spectacular optical effect known as a glory.

Soon our skies may feature Mickey Mouse ears and Coca-Cola symbols, thanks to the latest bright idea in advertising.

Earthbound cloud watchers will be glad to know they are not alone.

China is preparing to fire rockets at any clouds threatening to rain on the Olympics opening ceremony.

Too much time on your hands? Looking for something to amuse the kids? Then why not try this game.

Fewer clouds may have led to super-greenhouse episodes

Cloud lovers will be proud to hear that our fluffy friends may soon be helping to slow down global warming.

As experienced spotters will know, low clouds can sometimes line up parallel to the wind to form cumulus radiatus, also known as cloud streets.

There is startling evidence that clouds are also home to a range of tiny organisms.

Is this a photograph of a UFO, or just a car park on a foggy night?

What do homemade smoke bombs and musical interludes have to do with clouds?

Two exhibitions in London museums featuring cloud content.

Never underestimate the power of clouds.

An unidentified flying cloud (UFC) has been spotted in Hungary.

Ever wondered what a journey through clouds might sound like?

New images of noctilucent clouds taken by a NASA spacecraft may help solve a few mysteries…

A seasonal cloud-lookalike has made the headlines in a New Zealand newspaper.

A beach on the Lincolnshire coast, will soon have its own official cloudspotting area…

Society founder gives Martha Stewart membership to the society…

Member’s photograph on the cover of the Weather Watcher’s 3-Year Log Book, published by the Royal Meteorological Society…

Margaret Nelson’s photo of cirrus and
cumulus clouds in a cross wind

Most of us look up and marvel at clouds at least once a day – that is what makes us cloudspotters.

But chances are very few of us bother to keep a daily diary of what we have seen, unless we happen to be professional meteorologists.

Margaret Nelson (member 2812) is a keen amateur and records what she has seen near her Suffolk home in her online cloud journal. Her daily updates usually inlcude photographs, like the one shown here.

Lightning in Lincolnshire, taken by
our photo gallery editor Ian Loxley

A striking picture taken by our photo gallery editor Ian Loxley features in a new book about extreme weather.

Storm Force, by TV weathermen Michael Fish, Ian McCaskill and Paul Hudson, was published last month to mark the twentieth anniversary of the October 1987 hurricane, which flattened much of south-eastern England.

It uses pictures and news reports from national and regional archives to recall the most amazing episodes of weather that have left trails of death and destruction across the UK.

The book includes Ian’s photograph of lightning, which has also featured on the front cover of the International Journal of Meteorology.

Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney will be giving a talk on cloudspotting on Monday, November 12 as part of the Bridport Literary Festival.

If you live in or near Dorset, then for the Eype Centre for the Arts at St Peter’s Church, where you will be able to hear Gavin extol the virtues of cloudspotting in person.

His illustrated talk starts at 2.30pm and you can download a copy of the festival brochure here.

3D cloud image taken
by Ben Orona

If you click on the cloud photograph to the right and think perhaps it is time you wore glasses, you are right.

But your eyesight is probably fine – it is the picture that is playing tricks. It is an anaglyph image, which creates a stereoscopic 3D effect when viewed with two-colour glasses, usually cyan and red. Anaglyph images are made up of two colour layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect.

This example is part of a series of cloud pictures taken by Ben Orona. He says the two photographs which make up each 3D image were taken hundreds of feet apart, which helps give them their depth.

However, you will need a pair of anaglyph cyan-red glasses to see the 3D effect. You can buy them online – here, for example – but all the sites we found sold them in packs of five or ten. You may be able to buy them singly on eBay.

Lenticular clouds near Mt Adams
photographed by Darlisa Black

Amateur photographer Darlisa Black has written to tell us about a beautiful series of pictures she took of lenticular clouds near Mount Adams in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

She was walking in the hills near her home in Washington State when she spotted the formation and spent nearly two hours capturing its changing shapes in the fading light.

“As with many volcanoes, certain weather conditions bring about lenticular
formations, and all my life I have witnessed many ‘caps’ on the nearby Mt.
Adams and Mt. Hood in Oregon.

“On November 6, I was fortunate to be up in the hills on my day off,
taking photos and enjoying the day. I could see a small lenticular formation near the mountain, so I decided to drive up 10 miles above Trout Lake, Washington, to a viewpoint I knew of with a great view of Mt. Adams.

‘I was so excited, and hiked along the edge of the cliff edged road for a mile, taking well over a hundred photos over the next hour and a half. Every time I started to quit and get in the truck, the colors and form would change again becoming even more amazing! I finally quit when all color was gone and it was getting dark.

“Every few minutes, the formation would change significantly. I loved it right at the end when it seemed the layers were lifting up away from the lowest layer, until there was a complete separation between the bottom two layers.”

The result is an absolutely stunning slideshow, which you can see here.

Celestial, a film by member Esther Johnson

Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney features in a new film about the sky by one of our members, Esther Johnson.

Celestial takes the form of an experimental portrait, exploring the poetry of the sky, which is seen as a space of fascination and contemplation.

It features interviews with weather experts, scientists and cloud
lovers, focusing on their perceptions and thoughts about the sky. In the film, Gavin describes looking at clouds as a form of meteorological meditation.

Snippets of dialogue from the interviews are spliced with visuals, including time-lapse footage of the sky, cloud formations, aerial views and people cloudspotting. The film also uses sounds from weather monitoring equipment and noises created from the weather itself.

Celestial premiered a few weeks ago at the Urban Screens Conference in Manchester but there are a few more screenings coming up which members might like to try and attend: Urban Screens Conference Manchester, 02/11/07;
Aurora, Norwich, 10/11/07; 21st Leeds International Film Festival, 17-24/11/07; Site Gallery Sheffield, 03/08.

You can find out more about Celestial on Esther’s website, www.blanchepictures.com, and watch an extract of the film here: www.biggerpictureuk.net

Wheat Fields by
Jacob van Ruisdael,
c 1670

Franz Ossing (member 9648) has drawn our attention to a lively debate in the art history world about whether the Dutch 17th-century masters painted realistic clouds.

There is no doubt the landscape artists of the Dutch “Golden Age”, like Jacob van Ruisdael, painted clouds beautifully. The question is whether the clouds in their paintings were meteorologically accurate.

Some art historians claim to be able to find the complete World Meteorological Organisation cloud atlas reproduced in landscapes from that period. Others argue that cloud forms were distorted to fit compositions and certain types of clouds that are typical for Holland did not appear in the paintings.

Read more about this here.