Cloud Appreciation Society

Cirrus clouds are composed entirely of ice crystals, and when the Sun is high in the sky – at an angle of more than 58 degrees above the horizon – there’s a chance these ice crystals can refract the sunlight to create a horizontal band of colours known as a circumhorizon arc. Elena Correa spotted this circumhorizon arc in a Cirrus vertebratus cloud above Aptos, Califor...

‘You seize Tornado by his locks of mist,  
Burst his dense clouds, his wheeling spires untwist;  
Wide o’er the West when borne on headlong gales,  
Dark as meridian night, the Monster fails,  

‘Howls high in air, and shakes his curled brow,  
Ladling with serpent-train the waves below,  

Sandra Miller, Member 56,191 has a new novel, “No More Patients” released this month. She told us that the protagonist is Vivian Waters, a 91-year-old woman in a retirement community. She’s smart but snarky, and doesn’t always like herself. She has a new neighbour – Percy Loftus, a 90-year-old man who is a retired climate scientist and loves clouds. Sandra credits th...

Gregory Coster (Member 64,297) spotted Altocumulus stratiformis undulatus radiatus lacunosus clouds over DeWitt Lake in Ulster County, New York, US. The long name of this formation reflects the multitude of patterns on display. These are clumpy, upper mid-level clouds (Altocumulus) spread across much of the sky (stratiformis) with ribbed, wavelike patterns (undulatus) ...

Yingzhao Liu is a landscape painter and printmaker living in Seattle. She loves to paint clouds in all their forms focusing mainly on landscapes of the beautiful PNW – the painting above is entitled “Night Symphony“