It is a superhuman lenticularis and you can see it here:
Cloud of the Month for February 2014…

As part of the ‘Festival of Imagination’ season at Selfridges, London, Cloud Appreciation Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, will be giving an illustrated clouds talk in the store’s new ‘Imanginarium’ space. Put on by our friends at The Lost Lectures, he talk will be a guide to identifying different cloud formations – from common ones to rare and obscure. Gavin will also explain why the aimless pastime of cloudspotting serves as an antidote to the pressures of the digital age and a great aid to stimulating the creative mind.

Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Time: 6:30pm until 8:30pm
Location: Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, W1A 1AB London
Tickets: £15 from eventbright.co.uk

You can find out more about The Festival of Imagination here…

It is a beautiful and dramatic celestial display, but will it upset the Cloud Appreciation Society sticklers?
See January’s Cloud of the Month…

Kevin Kendle is a musician working in the field of tranquil, atmospheric instrumental music. A composer and synthesizer player, Kevin produced an album in 2000 called “Clouds,” describing 8 cloud types in music. Just recently, Kevin has released the long-awaited sequel to this best-selling album, “Clouds 2,” on his own Eventide Music label, musically depicting a further 8 cloud types, and providing the perfect accompaniment to cloud spotting! The CD booklet also features photographs from the Cloud Appreciation Society’s web gallery to illustrate the cloud types that the music is about.

Based in Baldock, in the North Hertfordshire countryside, Kevin has been producing gentle, haunting music in his own studio since 1992, to international acclaim. He has become widely known for consistently producing quality music with very high production values. For more information, and to hear samples of the music, please visit: www.kevinkendle.com

Cloud enthusiast Trevor Field emailed to tell us about the new glass roof which is proposed for Paddington Station. It has been announced that as part of the Crossrail Art Programme artist Spencer Finch intends to create an index of clouds embedded within the glass of the centrepeice of the new station. We like the fact that he is proposing a broad range of different cloud types rather than just using one type. We think that this will offer great opportunities for cloudspotters to refresh their identification skills whilst waiting for their train.

You can read more about this innovative project here.

Azhy Hasan, Member No 1,687, has just organised an exhibition of cloud photographs by members of The Cloud Appreciation Society in his home city of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The show, called ‘A Carnival in the Sky’, took place over a weekend in the prestigious and dramatic setting of the Shanedar Gallery within one of the city’s parks. It was a great success with many hundreds of visitors passing though during the three days.

The visitors spanned all ages, from school children to religious elders, and came from a range of locations within Kurdistan and Iraq, as well as from Egypt, Iran, USA and China. One visitor from the Iranian region of Sardasht beckoned Azhy over when he noticed that his own name appeared in the caption to a photograph of high, wispy clouds over Erbil City. The man’s parents had named him Cyrus, after the great king of Ancient Persia. The name is pronounced “See-roos” in Persian – and so sounds like the Latin cloud name Cirrus, which means a lock of hair, that is used to describe this cloud type. “Today,” exclaimed Cyrus, “I was amazed to learn, for the first time in my life, that my name is the same as that of this most beautiful of clouds.”

Supported by the Kurdistan Ministry of Culture and Youth and the Media Directorate of Erbil, the exhibition included photographs taken by a number of Society members, who all kindly agreed for their wonderful images to be shown. The photographers, in addition to Azhy himself, were Peter Andermann, Lauren Antanaitis, Cristina Diaz, Ron Engels, Jörg Gundlach, Vicki Harrison, A.J. Hidding, Phil Holmes, Andrew Kirk, Ian Loxley, Paul Martini, Kamila Mazurkiewicz, Ally McGurk, Derek Mundil, Doug Short, Norman Shulman and Basil Stathoulis.

“As I gazed into the colours and shapes in these photographs,” commented a local poet, Mr Muhsen Awara, “I realised that you have given clouds a voice. Of course, I have always seen clouds from the ground or in a plane, but this is the first time I’ve seen such amazing shapes and formations. These clouds express themselves like a poem, and they have filled me with imagination and spiritual feelings.”

Mr Azad Hamadamin, President of the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, revealed how the exhibition made him consider the sky in a way that he never had before. “For the first time in my life,” he said, “I feel that clouds are a wonderful and almost living part of nature. Well done for this wonderful gift to our people and very best wishes to all who participated in this unique exhibition.”

Azhy Hasan was very grateful to all the photographers who agreed for their images to be in the exhibition. “Believe me, you made a new history in this country,” he said. “So many people here have been introduced to CAS, and many of them only now realise for the first time that clouds actually have names, rather than just being fuzzy shapes that drift across the sky.” The Society is pleased and proud to have been able to help Azhy’s great work to bring the beauty of clouds to the attention of the people of Erbil City.

Cloud Appreciation Society member, Ulrike Wilkens, has drawn our attention to this news article on the Spiegel Online website. The Sicilian volcano Mount Etna spews ‘smoke rings’ into the air which can be up to 200 meters in diameter. You can see the images here.

The San Francisco Bay Area is famous for its foggy conditions. So when Japanese artist, Fujiko Nakaya, was asked earlier this year to design a bridge for the city’s Exploratorium science centre she decided to make a Fog Bridge. Along the sides of the bridge was a series of 800 nozzles spraying a fine mist of water droplets into the air, which shrouded the walkway in a swirling blanket of cloud.

We at The Cloud Appreciation Society have long been fans of Fujiko Nakaya. She has, after all, made fog and cloud installations her lifetime’s work. Her passion for foggy art began back in 1970 when she engulfed in cloud the Pepsi Pavilion of the Osaka Expo. Recently, she created a Fog Square in Paris, while her 2011 Cloud Parking was installed in a rooftop car park in Litz, Austria. Nakaya uses a cloud-generating system that she devised with her long-time collaborator, the California-based cloud physicist Thomas Mee. High powered pumps capable force water through copper pipes dotted with nozzles. The nozzles have openings as small as 160 microns, or six-thousandths of an inch, in diameter and are fitted with microscopically sized pins that atomize the water into billions of ultra-fine fog droplets. Each of these measures between fifteen and twenty microns in diameter.

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Fujiko Nakaya’s fog installation at the Toyota Municiple Museum of art in Toyota, Aichi:

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Her Fog Bridge in San Francisco:

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Her Fog Square in Paris:

It’s a waterspout, and it explains why clouds sometimes rain fish…
See the Cloud of The Month for November.

Daniel Portolan works for Skye, AOL’s weather site and wanted to share their cool new infographic which offers a scrolling to guide to 11 extraordinary clouds and where they appear in the sky. The infographic also includes frames of reference for the viewer including Felix Baumgartner’s 2012 jump, the altitude of a standard jumbo jet, and a skydiver’s descent.

Visit the infographic here: The SKYE Guide to Extraordinary Clouds

We were recently contacted by Dr Caroline Murray of the Cambridge Library Collection who thought that some of our members might be interested to know that they have reissued some of Luke Howard’s works on clouds: Seven Lectures on Meteorology, Essay on the Modifications of Clouds and The Climate of London

Today, 2nd October 2013, the Cloud Appreciation Society photo gallery has reached a milestone with the 10,000th image being put up. The image, which we have selected as Cloud of the Month for October, was photographed by Anton du Preeze and shows a mamma formation over Cape Town, South Africa.

We’d like to thank all the contributors to the photo gallery for helping us reach impressive milestone.

Brand new website, BeautifulNow invites you to enter their Beautiful Clouds Photo Competition, open for entries from 16th 22nd September 2013. There are some really great prizes on offer so please click here to enter the BeutifulNow Clouds Competition

UPDATE: Cloud Appreciation Society members have been selected as semi-finalists in the BeautifulNow Cloud Competition! Check them out and get ready to vote for the winner this week (30th Sept to 4th October 2013)

Brenda Barnard, Cloud Appreciation Society Member No. 17887, suggested that it was about time we produced an ‘Urban Cloudspotter’ embroidered patch. The patch, she argued, is sorely needed by city dwellers and would nicely complement our existing ‘Flying Cloudspotter‘ patche (for pilots), ‘Seafaring Cloudspotter‘ patch (for sailors) and ‘Mountain Cloudspotter‘ patch (for walkers).

When we sent Brenda her patch as a thank you, she sent us back this photo of her wearing it out and about.

As you can see this was a great idea and so we are now pleased to announce that we have available on the Cloud Shop our brand new Urban Cloudspotter embroidered patches.

There’s gold in them clouds!
See Cloud of the Month for September…

Celebrate the enigmatic and ever-changing nature of fog and explore the science behind what is one of San Francisco’s most salient meteorological phenomena at the Exploratorium’s first-ever Fog Festival.

This looks to be a great event if you are in the area and will take place on Saturday, 28th September from 12pm to 5pm.

Full details can be seen on their website

Cloud Appreciation Society Member, Tricia Clark, sent us the link to an ABC news story about the very early arrival of the Morning Glory cloud over Sweers Island in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria. These are usually visible from mid-September but made an appearance earlier this week on 13 August.

You can read the full article on the ABC Network website

NOVA is excited to announce the launch of the Cloud Lab a the third Lab in a growing collection of research offerings on the NOVA Labs site. In this NASA-funded site users can learn how to track the development of storms and better predict their impacts by conducting their own investigations about developing storms.
The Cloud Lab also includes a cloud gallery with 260 beautiful images. Users are challenged to analyze the cloud images and classify each cloud type they observe in the image—collecting favorites along the way.

Join them on Facebook
Follow them on Twitter @theNOVALabs

Society Founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney recently gave a 10-minute talk about cloudspotting at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. I has now been put up on the TED website, and you can see it here:
Watch ‘Gavin Pretor-Pinney: Cloudy with a Chance of Joy’ on TED.com

Users of our CloudSpotter iPhone app earn Stars and Achievements as they correctly identify the clouds that they photograph. But as they compete with each other to edge their way up the CloudSpotter Rankings page, they will also be helping scientists at NASA better understand and model how the clouds affect the Earth’s climate. We are excited to announce that NASA will be accessing the anonymous CloudSpotters data from around the world to fine-tune their state-of-the-art CERES cloud-observing satellite equipment. The instruments are central to scientists’ efforts to better predict how the Earth’s climate is likely to change over the decades to come because they will help us understand the complex role of clouds in determining ground temperatures. NASA will compare their satellite observations with the actual, verified, geo-tagged cloud observations by users of CloudSpotter, to see when their instruments are judging the clouds correctly. Of course, all the data we’ll make available to NASA is completely anonymous. One thing that we can all agree on about the future of the Earth’s climate is that the clouds are the big unknown. We have little idea whether warming average temperatures would result in more or less cloud cover. Nor do we know if a warming worlds would have an affect on the relative proportion of low clouds versus high clouds. It is a crucially important question since the low ones tend to have an overall cooling effect while the high ones tend to have a warming one. Clouds are considered the ‘wild cards’ in our attempts to accurately predict and model future temperatures. Whenever you have one of your cloud observations verified as correct by the CloudSpotter app, you will be helping scientists fine-tune the CERES cloud measurements, and so actively improving our ability to accurately model our future climate. More about the link between CloudSpotter and NASA…

CERES cloud-observing equipment aboard NASA’s Terra satellite. The CloudSpotter iPhone app teaches you about the different clouds and awards you stars as you build up your collection of photographs,

Cloud of the Month for July is radiating good vibes over Anchorage, Alaska.
See Cloud of the Month for July…

Cloud Appreciation Society member Michelle Arbon, is in the process of producing her next short film ‘Lunar Attraction’, and is running a competition for the best heart shaped cloud photograph. The winning cloud will be the design used in the film and the photographer will also win a whole host of goodies. For more information about the film, competitions and how to get involved please visit the competition page – the closing date for entries is 22nd July 2013.

Cloudspotter Chris Gathercole saw this artist’s project about using face recognition software to look at clouds.

Shinseungback Kimyonghun is a Seoul based tech art collective, focusing largely on computer vision. Their latest project, Cloud Face uses facial recognition to capture wisps and puffs of vapor that briefly converge to form the likeness of a human face.

It is remarkable work and you can read more about it You can read it here

Cloud Appreciation Society member, ‘H’ Brown sent us the link to this wonderful video showing a dynamic cloud column sculpture. Please take the time to view the whole video as it is pretty amazing!

Over the past year Clare Rose been collecting a sky diary, and using Facebook as a way of sharing these images with friends. Other people have joined in and it has been a great way to connect with people all over by looking at the same, but also very different sky.

Clare would love the chance to create a worldwide sky diary over the course of one day – June 21st, the solstice.

Over the course of the day, she is inviting people to capture three images of the sky. One in the morning, one in the afternoon and one again at evening/dusk – or night if people have the equipment and skills for night skies.
She is hoping to collect 1500 images of the sky from all over the world and from these images complete a series of paintings. She is not yet sure of the full scope of that, however you will be acknowledged in anything that comes of this endeavour. By submitting your photographs, you will be consenting for them to be used for any work, publication, artwork that might come of the event and all participants will be acknowledged.

So if you think you would like to be involved, or know someone who might be keen to participate, please sign up and spread the word.

Here is what to do:

1. Let Clare know you are going to take part – She needs at least 500 people to commit to this so invite your friends along. There’s an invitation on Facebook called fifteen hundred skies. Join!
www.facebook.com/events/499127830135320/?fref=ts

2. Set yourself a reminder to take photos on the 21st of June this year – in fact set three reminders, one for the morning, afternoon and again at dusk. It doesn’t have to be at the same time, people’s situations are all different, just choose three occasions over the day to take the time to look up and capture a sky. Just use your phone, don’t worry about having your camera. Whatever is convenient.

3. Take your images – it can include buildings, nature, anything – though the focus is the sky. It doesn’t have to be beautiful – it can be grey, misty whatever you are offered. It will change over the day!

4. Record three words to capture where you are at, what might be on your mind, how you feel, what the sky “says” to you, memories – just three words. It might seem completely random – that’s ok.

5. Record where you are – e.g. Oxford St, London, UK, paddock, Grass Valley, WA, Mount Cook, South Island, New Zealand and the approximate time. e.g. 2pm, mid afternoon.

5. Send your images through to fifteenhundredskies@yahoo.com along with your words and locations.

6. Watch this space. If Claire knows you are taking part, she can keep you involved in what happens with this project so please let her know.

Any questions/suggestions, please email Clare or post a message on the Facebook event page.

Only 6 weeks to go – spread the word, She needs your help to get this off the ground – literally- and start looking up!

As part of an arts festival called “Celebrating the Imagination“, Cloud Appreciation Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney will be giving a talk on cloudspotting at the Rook Lane Arts centre in Frome, Somerset, UK. The talk will be richly illustrated with images showing the different types of clouds and there will be questions and answers afterwards.

When: Thursday, May 2, 2013
Time: Doors open at 7pm. Talk starts at 7.30pm
Where: Rook Lane Arts, Rook Lane Chapel, Bath Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DN, UK
Cost: £8 (£6 concession) + booking fee
Book tickets: You can buy tickets from the Bath Box Office…

RSPB Old Moor and The Cloud Appreciation Society have joined forces to create a perfect day of cloud gazing with a slideshow, talks and a chance to just lay back, look at the sky, and relax.

Date: Sunday 19 May
Talks: at 11 am and 2pm given by the Cloud Appreciation Society Photo Gallery Editor, Ian Loxley.
Price: The event is free but the reserve entry fees apply: £4 adults, £2 children, £2.50 concessions.

Full details of the event can be found here

Norfolk and Norwich Festival are looking for enthusiastic cloud spotters to come and participate in an exciting installation taking place in Norwich city centre from the 11th to the 26th May.

We are currently inviting groups to come and hold different happenings, discussions, social encounters and events as part of ‘It’s all up in the Air’, by Irish artist Rhona Byrne. The piece consists of a series of large ‘black clouds’, which the public are invited to wonder through or sit underneath on carpet islands. The clouds are made from black modelling balloons, and play on the opposites of the playful, celebratory, light weight nature of the material and the tense twisted dark heavy mass of a storm cloud.

It would be great to have members of the Cloud Appreciation Society come and share their knowledge, experiences or even quirky facts so we can really make the most the space and this amazing project. We are up for all ideas and it would really be up to you about how you would like to run it – perhaps you would like to have an in-depth discussion about the science behind clouds, share images or stories, or just sit and chat. Our only request is that the public can join in and develop a greater understanding of what it’s all about!

If your group are based in Norfolk or the surrounding area and would be interested in hosting a meeting or discussion about cloud appreciation under the big black clouds, please contact Lizzie@nnfestival.org.uk for more information. For more info on the artist please visit her website

You can see the full details of this and other events at the festival here

It is a view over awe-inspiring castles of the atmosphere, photographed from the office window of an airline pilot…
See the Cloud of the Month for April…

Charlie Williams regularly performs children’s programmes in Seattle schools. One of the shows is a science presentation about clouds aimed at first graders and is called “The Loudest Cloud” which encourages the children to look at the different cloud personalities. He has very kindly offered to share this as a resource for our members and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The Loudest Cloud © Charlie Williams

Helmut C Jacobs recently sent us details of a CD containing three “Cloud Poems” composed by the Swedish composer Bror Beckman (1866-1929).

“At the beginning of the 20th century the Swede Bror Beckman (1866-1923) and the German Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)composed numerous works for harmonium which were inspired by the special sound and expressiveness of this instrument. The two composers of the late Romantic period were in contact and thought highly of each other. While Karg-Elert’s works for harmonium are available in numerous recordings, Beckman’s pieces have unfortunately been completely ignored so far. They are published for the first time on this CD”

To listen to samples of the music or to purchase the CD, please see their website here

A new research article has recently been published entitled Hailstones: A Window into the Microbial and Chemical Inventory of a Storm Cloud.

It explains how the research shows that clouds are alive, containing living organisms that are found in the water droplets and ice crystals. The full article is published here

Danièle Siebenhaar, member number 12650, was recently featured in the Zurich based newspaper Tagblatt. Danièle, 73, photographed clouds that look like angels, dogs and flying hearts and dreams of having her own gallery exhibition.

You can see more information here

It’s an aerial view of storm clouds forming a ‘squall line’.
Go to Cloud of the Month for February…

As part of the ‘Idle Sundays’ series of talks taking place in Selfridges through January and February, Cloud Appreciation Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney will be giving an illustrated talk on clouds and cloudspotting in the books department of the store. The talk is free to attend and there’s no need to book – just turn up. The Idle Sundays talks are put on by The Idler Academy. For more info please see the ‘Whats On’ section here.

The talk will take place on Sunday, 17th February 2013 from 1.00pm to 2.00pm.

Cloud Appreciation Society member Claire Halson, loves all thing clouds! In her spare time she makes all different designs of cloud and raindrop cushions and mobiles. You can see more of her work here

To start the New Year, we have selected a once-in-a-lifetime cloud spot of rare ‘halo phenomena’ over over Huntsville, Alabama, US, by Jane George…
See January’s Cloud of the Month…

Spain’s First International Conference of Cloudspotters took place at the end of October 2012 at the beautiful School Farm of Barreiros (Granxa Escola de Barreiros) in Galicia in the northwest of Spain. Organised by Germán Díaz (CAS Member 28232), Siña Fernández and Fernando Fuentes, the conference was attended by 80 cloudspotters from far and wide.

There was a great range of talks, including TV weather presenter and meteorologist Martín Barreiro explaining cloud formation, weather photography expert Elías Cueto on how to photograph the sky, anthropologist Luís Díaz Viana on the role of clouds in historical folk tales and contemporary urban legends, Marcos Alvarez Merinero from the European Space Agency on the observation of clouds from Space, and Elena Lapeña, Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Vigo, on the roles of clouds throughout the history of painting. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, couldn’t be there in person but this didn’t stop him from officially opening the event. He was beamed onto the screen via Skype to welcome the crowd and give a talk about the importance of cloudspotting, and why it is good for the soul.

Running over two days, the conference also included an evening concert by The Cardiophonic Method entitled ‘The heartbeat of clouds and other melodies’, and an exhibition of cloud art by Ignacio López. There were even rides in a balloon and a paratrike for those who wanted to do some close-up cloudspotting.

The conference was well covered in the Spanish newspapers (e.g. El Progreso, El Mundo, El Correo Gallego), radio and television (e.g. RTVE, Televisión de Galicia).

• Los expertos afirman que observar las nubes es bueno para la salud

 
 

Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney has donated a signed copy of The Cloudspotter’s Handbook and a Society calendar to The Intellegent Optimist who are aiming to raise $100,000 to support their new program of publications, events and courses designed to feature the ideas and thinkers that are moving the world in the direction of greater possibility in arenas like peace, sustainability, spiritual evolution and holistic health.

If you would like to enter a bid for this cause, please see their website

Carlos Bueno, owner of the hotel Aire de Bardenas in Spain has offered a special price to members of the Cloud Appreciation Society in the form of a 20% discount on all rooms.

The hotel is situated in the north of Spain, near the French border a 90 minute drive into the desert of Bardenas. It is a beautiful desert, the biggest in Europe and is a Natural Park and Biosphere Reserve. The northwest wind, The Cierzo, blows across the desert creating a diverse range of clouds.

You can visit the hotel website here. They also have a Facebook album with more than 80 images of the clouds as seen from the desert and their hotel here