Margaret Webster recently joined the Society after reading an article in the New York Times. She then created this Venn diagram to help her learn the big ten clouds and we love it!
She says she is seeking “to persuade all who’ll listen of the wonder and beauty of clouds,” although the patience of some of her family members may be growing a little thin! As a retired psychotherapist, she told us she completely agrees with our statement that appreciating clouds is cheaper than a psychiatrist!
In this entertaining and enlightening talk, Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney gives a tour of the sky, showing how to distinguish the many different cloud formations, from the common Cumulus to the rare and fleeting Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud. Gavin argues that clouds are the most evocative and poetic aspect of nature – and that cloudspotting might just be the perfect antidote to the pressures of modern life.
Date: Friday 8 July 2016
Time: 7.30pm–9.30pm
Venue: The Parish Rooms, Market Square Somerton, Somerset TA11 7NB, UK
Ticket Price: £10.69 – £11.74
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Cloud enthusiast, Neil Stevenson, recently sent us this video of ‘weird’ clouds he had filmed above Keswick in the Lake District, UK.
We are very excited to launch the first Cloud Appreciation Society holiday, which will be taking place at the end of February 2017. The Society will be travelling to the beautiful wilderness of Canada’s Norther Territories to what we consider to be the best destination in the world for watching Nature’s ultimate sky spectacle: the Northern Lights.
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Cloud Appreciation Society supporter H Brown has recently adopted a tree on behalf of the Society
We chatted to The Weather Channel, as we do each month, to discuss our Cloud of the Month. For the month of June it is the extremely high, night-shining ‘noctilucent cloud’, because for the Northern Hemisphere we are now entering the season for spotting these eerie and mysterious looking clouds.
Sarah Longlands is an artist based in Bedford, UK
Mike Rubin (member 329) recently sent us this edited video with soundtrack of an epic glider flight on 29th December 2015. It features a timelapse of an aerotow above the cloud, selfie stick action above the clouds, and cockpit footage as he flew over, around, through and under the clouds before a shower rained him out of the sky. He says it was his best winter flight ever!
Karen Fitzgerald is an artist based in Wisconsin, USA
Rebekah Westphal, member number 41051, told us about “Common Clouds” by Kevin Van Aelst. We love this interpretation of cloud identification in coffee and thank Kevin for contributing his piece. You can learn more about him on his website here.
Cloud of the Month for June is the extremely high, and rather mysterious, night-shining cloud…
Society founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney was recently interviewed by 612 ABC Brisbane
Christian Shorey from Colorado recently shared this timelapse video
Our beautiful new tees are now available in the Cloud Shop. They were printed for us here in the UK by the eco-award-winning Rapanui Factory, onto 100% organic cotton that was made ethically in a wind-powered factory in India with a fully traceable supply chain. Find out more….
“Songs and the Sky” is an exhibition of art and music currently showing at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York until 18th June 2016.
The exhibition title derives from Alfred Stieglitz’s historic series, Songs of the Sky, the artist’s original title for the Equivalents (1925-1937). Similar to notes in a musical score, these images of cloud patterns form an abstract, universal visual language equivalent to the artist’s inner state, emotion, and ideas. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to view such a large collection of Equivalents.
Please visit the Bruce Silverstein Gallery for more information
The cloud photograph is part of a long-term project by Jeffrey Pflaum. The student poetry comes from two anthologies he compiled
“Flash Flood, Clark County, Nevada” – a poem by Alexa Mergen
David Austin Clar is based in Rochester, New York
The New York Times Magazine recently published an informative – and at times, moving – feature by Jon Mooallem about the Cloud Appreciation Society. Read the online version to discover how the Society came about and to learn of our efforts to have a new type of cloud accepted by the World Meteorological Organisation. Bear in mind, however, that the story ends in tears…
This is the second in a series of timelapse videos by Hong Hu, for his project “Cloudspotting”
The cloud photograph is part of a long-term project by Jeffrey Pflaum. The student poetry comes from two anthologies he compiled
‘Cloudy with a Chance of Joy’ by Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney…
Materese is based in Buckingham, PA, USA…
Cloud of the Month for May is one of the rarest cloud formations, and quite possibly the most difficult one to spot…
Cloudspotter, Hong Hu recently began a side project called “Cloudspotting” where he will be capturing time-lapse videos of clouds. Here is the first of three he has shared with us entitled “Light & Dark”.
The University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum is currently running an exhibition all about clouds. It’s called “Clouds…Temporarily Visible.” This image is from an installation that’s part of that exhibit. The cloud is composed of lightbulbs varying in size and opacity. Visitors can stroll under the cloud and pull the strings to change the luminosity of the cloud.
The exhibition runs until Sunday, 22nd May, and you can see more about it on the Weisman Art Museum website.
Cloud Appreciation Society Member 1,095, Davo Laninga has made a wonderful time-lapse film capturing the drama and power of the monsoon season over Arizona, US. Filmed over 3 months, 4,500 miles and about 50,000 photos captured between 2 cameras, it was clearly a huge undertaking and we applaud him for it!
This month, as we do every month, we had a live chat with The Weather Channel in the US, to tell them about our Cloud of the Month. For April, it’s Melyssa Wright’s beautiful photograph of mamma clouds over Linton-on-Ouse, North Yorkshire, UK.
We have given the Cloud Appreciation Society website a new layout and design, and are now in testing phase. There will be quite a few bugs, which we will be sorting out over the coming days. We would love to hear in the comments below if you’ve come across anything that seems broken. It will probably take you a little while to get used to where things are now, but we hope the development will be an improvement on the previous design. We hope also that it paves the way for the site to work better on mobile devices.
There is plenty more to do on the Photo Gallery. You can currently filter for cloud types by clicking the menu icon in the top right to reveal the cloud-type filter terms, but the gallery search functionality is still not in place.
Do let us know what you think of the new, cleaner look!
When the underside of a cloud layer is festooned with pouches like this, the formation is known as mamma…
Jean is in Vaughn, MT, USA…
Thanks to Society member, Rob Blair, for drawing our attention to this interesting cloud formation that was featured as the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day on 2nd March. A full description can be seen on their website.
We were pleased to learn that Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, recently published a story to publicise the sorry deterioration of the historic home of Luke Howard. In 1802, this 19th Century pharmacist and lifelong lover of the sky devised the naming system for clouds that we still use today. His legacy for the world of meteorology and far beyond cannot be underestimated.
