On the shore of Lake Bohinj, Slovenia, plumes of white drifted over the treetops, like smoke from some fairytale house nestled among the trees, while the mountains were blurred by Nimbostratus cloud, the source of the raindrops stippling the lake surface.

Nimbostratus is a deep and dull wet blanket of cloud, often featureless, always saturated, and producing steady and prolonged precipitation. The formation that tends to give the others a bad name, Nimbostratus is hardly the most photogenic of clouds.

No wonder Kerry Orr (Member 64,932) was focussed more on the cloud shreds snagging in the trees below. Rather than fairy smoke, these are known as pannus, named from the Latin for a ‘fragment’, ‘rag’, or ‘tatter’ – an evocative accessory cloud known to lurk in the saturated air beneath Nimbostratus.