Saturday, October 4, 2014

WATCH THE SKIES:

This Chaotic New Cloud Could Be The Coolest Thing Since Cumulus (Rafi Letzter, 10.01.2014, Popular Science)

Gavin Pretor-Pinney hopes a wild, turbulent cloud he calls "undulatus asperatus" (literally: volatile waves) will emerge as a rare addition to the first new edition of The International Cloud Atlas in four decades. Its strange features are visible as the formation rolls over Lincoln, Nebraska in the time-lapse above.

Pretor-Pinney founded The Cloud Appreciation Society, whose online manifesto asserts that "clouds are unjustly maligned" and pledges to "fight 'blue-sky thinking' wherever we find it." His organization collects images of clouds from amateur photographers who contribute from all over the world, and maintains an impressive online collection. He tells The Verge that he began to notice that the clouds in one small group of photos did not match any known formation. He decided to push for recognition of these clouds as a new type.