We’ve all played the cloud game as we watch the changing forms we liken to different animals. Shall we take it up a notch?
Beyond looking for imagined likenesses, there is the real science of clouds and how those shapes act as signs of what’s happening at different levels of the atmosphere.
It’s also simple fun to just look up and try to spot the more unusual cloud formations such as: the Kelvin-Helmholtz, Asperitas, Lacunosus, Horseshoe Vortex, Fallstreak Hole, Tuba, Lenticularus, Mama, Roll Clouds, Pileus and Nacreous, among others. This is nothing less than a dynamic alchemical mixture of water vapor, and dust at varying temperatures and winds aloft: ever-changing sky-scrapes.
The Cloud Appreciation Society was founded in 2005 by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. I’ve been using the society’s “ CloudSpotter Ap” now for about a year. It is another way to open our eyes to the marvels all around us that we often take for granted. You can get competitive too by collecting awards for spotting different combinations of clouds.
As we are spending more time at home in states especially hard hit by the Covid 19 virus, it’s refreshing to mix book time with daytime reading from the Book of Nature. It also puts to shame what passes for most television and the cost of cable.
Coupled with birding and astronomy, what better low cost amusements to feed the mind and, perhaps more importantly, the soul. I commend the practice.
Check out what’s UP!
© The Harried Mystic, 2020 and Br. Anton, TSSF. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
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