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August 23, 2022
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CLOUDSHIP, SPACESHIP

Ric Johnson has written “Cloudship, Spaceship”, a poem based on this photograph he took which was obviously a flying saucer disguised as a cloud!

CLOUDSHIP, SPACESHIP

Oh, gorgeous saucer
Cruising, skirting
Clouded skies.

Slim saucer surveying
A cloudship sweeping
In trim exercise.

Cloudship as spaceship
Skims on patrol
Perhaps us they despise.

Camouflaged spaceship
Cunning as cloud
And quietly spies.

Marauding she gleams
A sauntering dreamer
Our world she defies.

Assessing, digesting
Thinking, deciding
As time flies.

Such spirit of travel
Exploring new dawns
While thought multiplies.

In our world unread
We battle away
Unaware of surprise.

Deceiving me here
She’s nothing but vapour
As the crow flies.

Gleaming creature depart
Away from our years
Leaving us to our skies.

Unforming, dissolving
Maybe sensing our sorrows
As Earth cries.

© Ric Johnson – Another Liverpool Poet

July 19, 2022
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Sunrise and Moon

Massimilano Squadroni sent us his latest timelapse “Sunrise and Moon”.  It was filmed on 13th July 2022 at Osservatorio Capanna Regina Margherita, a mountain hut belonging to the Italian Alpine Club located on the summit of Punta Gnifetti of Monte Rose near the border between Italy and Switzerland.  He told us “The moon sets in the sea of clouds, the climbers leave the hut, bright spots along the way back, the sunrise from Punta Gnifetti is a unique emotion”

July 8, 2022
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The Clouds of Life by Rachel Jacobs

Rachel Jacobs, Member 55,934 wrote told us she “created a poem for the firmly-minded purpose of the well-being of the clouds”.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The Clouds of Life

A round of life, and that of death

Who beckons those away.

Who steals the knife, who steals the breath

Of those who yearn to stay.


Of brevity, of shortness

Rather infant fresh demise,

Of lives and souls of drifting wisps,

Of youth with all but lies.


To them they are of Cirrus

Who crane their necks to see,

A faintly there, but there alas,

Of actuality.


Of those who seek revenge,

Who sought and seek and went,

To all the spitting measures

But never reached content.


Altocumulus they turn,

Their souls reach up and are,

Through hills and dales they try and fail

A moon without a star.


And gentlemen and ladies

With motives good and true, 

Who shine through after darkness

And honour through and through,


These noble ones at heart,

Who learned in the lore,

Become all the fair cumulus

In kindness evermore.


And it comes, by-and-by,

From solid, sinking, be,

To serene drifting sighs,

Of man dustpaned by me.


Swept away by rolls of clouds

With kerchief, breath and shroud,

For life nor death can sunder

All the love to man endowed.


© Rachel Jacobs 2022

July 5, 2022
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Winter Clouds

Lucretia Bingham, member 53,512, recently completed this painting of winter clouds – all silver threads and golden needles, pierced with greys.

June 3, 2022
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A Haven in the Clouds

Dave Loewenstein, Member 58,926, created this cloud-themed mural entitled “A Haven in the Clouds”.  The mural in central Kansas, designed and painted with local high school students, imagines a bird’s eye (or satellite’s) view above clouds that spell out the town’s name, Haven, and if you look closely, Heaven, thanks to the letter E that appears one of the farm fields.

ou can see more about it on Dave’s website – DaveLoewenstein.com

June 1, 2022
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Supercell over Vercelli, Italy

Massimiliano Squadroni, shared this timelapse of the formation of a supercell on Saturday 28 May, which affected the Vercelli area in north Italy with violent rain, hail and gusts of wind.

The storm system is seen from the terrace of Capanna Gnifetti 3647, Monte Rosa, Italy

May 10, 2022
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“The Kiss” by Ric Johnson

Ric Johnson, a poet from Liverpool, took this photograph and wrote a limerick about it whilst travelling North on the M6, somewhere in the Midlands, UK.  This particular kiss only lasted for a very short time before dissolving.

The Kiss

You may think this is just hit and miss

When two clouds have a moment of bliss

A collision of lips at height atmospheric

Left us loonies below in a state quite mesmeric

As giants melt in Cumulus kiss!

© Ric Johnson 2022 – Another Liverpool Poet

March 30, 2022
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March 2022

The Eyebrow Cloud That’s Waiting to be Made Official

This cloud formation should have a Latin name, but it is yet to be classed as an official cloud type. It can appear in the turbulent airflows downwind of mountain peaks, and we think it looks like eyebrows in the sky.

This would be a good cloud to be added to the list of types because it has a distinctive appearance that’s easily differentiated from other formations. Also, pilots would likely want it to have a name for practical reasons: so that they can learn to stay well away from it. This cloud reveals where turbulence in the mountain airflow is particularly chaotic and violent, which is where no glider pilot wants to fly.

The turbulence develops as part of the rising and dipping flow of air as winds pass over mountains. Much of the airflow is smooth, rising to pass over the peak and dipping back down again beyond, like water flowing over a rock in a stream. But just as the water flowing in a stream can break and foam at a particular point beyond the obstacle, so can the wave of the airflow break at a particular point downwind of the mountain peak. Where this happens, if it does, depends on the shape of the terrain and the speed of the wind. Often the breaking wave of air is invisible. Sometimes, it produces a churning, roll-like cloud described by pilots as a rotor cloud. Sometimes, when the air tumbles over itself, it makes the distinctive shape of eyebrow clouds.

We’ve had examples of this unnamed formation sent in by members from around the world, including examples over the Sierra Nevada of California, US, the mighty Himalayas of Nepal, and the alpine peaks of Switzerland like The Eiger mountain and The Jungfrau. We even have a Latin name in mind for it. This was suggested to us by Latin scholar Rick LaFleur, Franklin Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Georgia, US when we asked him how the Romans would have referred to an eyebrow. Rick suggested the term supercilium, which is Latin for ‘eyebrow’.

It’s been a few years since the Cloud Appreciation Society last argued that the official naming system for clouds should have a new classification of cloud added to it. The chaotic, wavy-looking asperitas cloud was eventually accepted as a new cloud type by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) after we’d argued the case for it to be given a name. Asperitas was added to the WMO’s official reference work The International Cloud Atlas back in March 2017. That was exactly five years ago this month. Perhaps it’s time to start a new cloud-classification campaign and raise some eyebrows with the supercilium cloud?

Altocumulus ‘supercilium’ spotted by over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, US by Marc Davey (Member 41868).

March 8, 2022
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ILL Winds by Keith Harder

Artist, Keith Harder sent us this video of his work inspired by a photo taken in Alberta, Canada. The painting is from a series of paintings entitled “ILL Winds” that depict towering cumulus at night.

February 8, 2022
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From Yvonne Maximchuk

Yvonne Maximchuk, member 50,031, has been an artist and cloudspotter for many years. She told us “I’ve always been a cloud gazer and they’ve shown up in my work since my first paintings in 1970…”

February 5, 2022
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‘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.

January 28, 2022
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From Clare Scott

Clare Scott, member 39,730, created this plein air, pastel painting of a pyrocumulus cloud building from one of the largest wildfires (Cameron Peak Fire) in Colorado north of where she was painting.

December 31, 2021
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Castelluccio di Norcia

Massimiliano Squadroni sent us this timelapse from Castelluccio di Norcia, February 16, 2021 showing a wonderful display of clouds over one of the highest settlements in the Apennines.