The Sky Looks… Weird
Walking to work with Liz a few days ago, I looked up and noticed the clouds were in an odd and unusual formation. There were these long stretches or streaks, as though someone had run their fingers across the sky.
A thought I had seeing this was: “I should know what this means.” How many different skies have each of us seen, in our lifetimes? I feel I should be able to better understand what cloud formations mean, given how many I’ve seen.
There are a myriad of human emotions, most of which we can recognize even on a stranger’s face. But when I see a cloudy sky, I’m at a loss as to what it means.
Sure, if it’s dark or grey – probably means rain. But if I see something unusual, the best I can muster is “That doesn’t look good.” By now, shouldn’t I have some better sense of the sky and the weather it foretells?
Is there just too much variation in clouds and weather, for us to learn all this? Or do we simply not look up enough? And do we not pay enough attention, those few times that we do?
This is not the first time I’ve had this thought.
I, too, sometimes notice cloud shapes or patterns that are unusual or pretty, and I want to know what they are. I especially see these when I’m driving home from work down the expressway and I can see a lotta sky all at once. Not the best time to take a photo to look up the cloud formation later.
These two books are very tempting, especially the first:
http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Collectors-Handbook-Gavin-Pretor-Pinney/dp/0811875423/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404795634&sr=1-2&keywords=cloud+guide
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cloudspotters-Guide-Science-History/dp/0399533451/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
Juliet (July 8, 2014 at 12:04 am)Those look like excellent (and fun) resources – thanks, Juliet!
avoision (July 9, 2014 at 6:50 am)