Fleeting Formation

On watch in my favorite cloudspotting hammock over the weekend, these strange clouds covered a patch of the sky. Judging by their height, I figured they were cirrus, but couldn't figure out what variety. I grabbed The Cloud Collector's Handbook, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney and flipped through it--quickly for what I hoped would be an instant match between sky and page. I found it under lacunosus. "This variety of cloud is identified in terms of the gaps between cloud elements, rather than the clouds themselves," Pretor-Pinney writes. "It is when a cloud layer is composed of more or less regular holes, around which fringes of cloud form, like a net or rough honeycomb."

So the cloud pictured here is a cirrocumulus undulatus lacunosus. These cirrus because they are high-elevation clouds formed of ice crystals; cumulus because they appear in patches or layers of cloudlets (not wisps like plain cirrus); undulatus because they appear in waves which form when the air above and below the cloud layer is moving at different speeds or in different directions; and lacunosus because of the holes formed by sinking pockets of air.

Apparently, this variety of cloud is short-lived (and earns bonus points on the cloudspotter's scorecard). In fact, about ten minutes after I photographed them, they disappeared.

While collecting points for spotting clouds is geeky, it was oddly gratifying to be able to name clouds I would have described as "white" a year ago.

A Swim in the Stratus

This is the view of the lake where I swam this morning. The air was a chilly 50 degrees F, but the water was warmer, even inviting. I was unsure of how far out I could swim or whether or not I would get disoriented, panic, cramp, and or drown. So I grabbed a ball of string (the kind you tie up brown paper packages with), walked down this boat ramp and tied one end of the string to the fence off the boat ramp to the left. Then I eased into the water and let out the string as I kicked back toward the middle of the lake. I felt safe and couldn't imagine feeling otherwise.

I had hoped the string would reach the middle of the lake where the ramp, the houses, and the trees along the shore would disappear in the fog. But the string ran out before everything went gray. So I let go. A big smile broke across my face. I kicked out further, keeping an eye on the bright but fog-occluded disc of the sun and the slanted white line that was the facing board on the eave of a house on the shore next adjacent to the ramp. I alternated kicking on my back to stay warm and swimming the head-out-the-water breast stroke to look at the fog. The chilly air stung my arms and legs as I lifted them from the water. It was as if the fog had a bite. The water itself--so bracing on a hot day-- felt like a warm blanket on this September morning.

I watched the fog move and rise across the lake in wisps and wafts. There were no ducks, no dragonflies, nothing but me and fog. Fog, I have recently learned, is technically a low stratus cloud. It is the only kind you can experience "up close and personal" without getting airborne. Now, a few days after the autumnal equinox, the lake is releasing a summer's worth of sunlight into the air. The warm air on the lake's surface comes into close contact with the cooler air above it and condenses, creating tiny droplets of water: fog. Because the sun was visible through the fog, this type of cloud is called stratus translucidus (as opposed to opacus).

I was alone in the lake for about half an hour. But I was not alone at the lake. There was a small cabbed truck parked near my car in the gravel lot. Its engine was running. Before I took my swim, I thought to explain to the driver what I was doing--as a safety measure. I approached the truck and saw a bearded, flannel-shirted, 30-year old man in the passenger seat. He had his white-socked feet up on the dashboard, his eyes were closed, and he was apparently sleeping. I chose not to tap on his window and explain myself. This would require him to explain himself--where was the driver? why was his engine running? was he planning to fish? was someone in the back of his truck?

After I had tied my string to the fence and disappeared into the fog of the lake, it occurred to me that maybe I should have tapped on his window or at least checked to make sure the exhaust pipe of his truck was belching its fumes into the air and not into the truck. Perhaps he was thinking he should have gotten out of his truck and inquired about what I was doing swimming on a chilly morning with a ball of twine out into the fog. I couldn't imagine myself, dripping wet, tapping on his window asking him if he was okay. He probably couldn't imagine standing on the boat ramp asking me if I was okay.

So I swam and hoped we both wouldn't end up in the local news in the next day's paper.
When I returned to the ramp, I reeled in my twine, grabbed my towel and got into my car. As I pulled out of the lot, I drove close enough to his truck to see him. I waved. He waved. We both smiled--awake and alive--no questions asked.

Lifting the Clouds

This past May, I sat in on a watercolor class taught by Anita Ellison at the Olympia Center downtown. I didn't actually sit, but wandered around the classroom watching the small group of students paint clouds. Anita is a talented artist and beloved teacher of this cozy group of beginning painters. So beloved that many of her "beginners" have been in the class for nine years. Anita kindly agreed to get her students to try painting clouds for my benefit--to help me learn how to really see clouds.

I found my way to Anita through a friend who is the biologist at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. I asked her if any plein aire painters ever gathered at the refuge to paint clouds. It's one of my favorite places to watch clouds and I was certain painters would flock there to capture the glory of the skies above the Sound and Mt. Rainier.

First Duh Lesson: Clouds move. Plein aire painters don't paint clouds outside. They take photographs of them and then paint them later--inside, in places like art studios.

Anita was one of these artists. The photographs of clouds she was planning to use in class this day were imported from Yosemite National Park, CA, where Anita had just been on vacation. Granted, the clouds were luscious cumulus heaps that deserved to be painted, but I couldn't help but think our local clouds were just as deserving. But this class is about learning how to paint--not necessarily learning how to paint local.

With all the ease of a pro, Anita mixed a limited palette of cobalt, raw sienna, burnt umber, Alizarin crimson, ochre, and cerulean. With loose, sweeping strokes, she washed the heavy-weight watercolor paper with water and then with ochre for warmth. She diluted and swirled raw sienna and burnt umber and created a soft and inviting earth. Gentle hills seemed to rise off the paper. Ochre touched with cerulean gave the hills the green of life. It was so quick, so magical, so simple, so elegant. Paint and paper--not PaintShop.

Above the hills, Anita created the sky with cerulean, cobalt, and bit of crimson. As in nature, she painted the sky darker at the top, lighter toward the horizon. Before the paint could begin to dry, Anita began making clouds. With a paper towel. The kind you buy at the grocery store. The kind, I had always thought, intended for blotting up milk and other spills. Anita tore off one paper towel from the roll, scrunched it up in one hand, and then began blotting the wet blue sky.

Clouds. Lovely puffy white clouds. Cumulus congestus. In the wake of every blot was a cloud. I was tempted to grab the paper towel, shake it out, and look for package of special cloud-making chemicals inside. Surely there was something up her sleeve?

But no. What Anita was doing was called "lifting." She was simply lifting off the blue paint before it dried to expose the white of the paper. The way the paper towel was scrunched, the pressure Anita applied, the roll of her wrist as she worked the paper towel across the sky revealed whiteness in the shape of clouds.

In Nature, clouds are formed by warm, moist air rising and condensing into visible droplets of water or ice crystals. The shapes they assume depend on factors such as temperature, dew point, pressure, and altitude. In Art, clouds can be formed by applying then removing colored water from paper. In Nature, the air rises to form clouds. In Art, the water is lifted.

Clouds Make Headlines

It's not often a cloud makes the news, especially one that isn't associated with hurricane, tornado, or violent storm. On June 12, however, newspapers all over the country ran an Associated Press story about a very strange cloud described as looking "like Armageddon."

The story began back in 2006 when a woman from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, photographed a strange sky from the 11th floor of her office building (top, by Jane Wiggins). The cloud dissipated in 15 minutes and the woman held onto the photograph until just recently when she shared it with a group of dedicated weather watchers associated with the Cloud Appreciation Society based in England. The group posted the photograph online, but did not know how to categorize it. It was definitely a cumulus (heaped, puffy) cloud, but which type? It didn't seem to fit the known categories of culumus, altocumulus, or stratocumulus clouds. So the Society has begun lobbying the Royal Meteorological Society in England to create a new category--altocumulus undulatus asperatus. The last word, meaning agitated, is not part of an existing cloud name.

Why is this news? Because a new cloud type has not been recognized by scientists since 1951. And because doing so is controversial. The Society of splitters says it's new and different, the group of lumpers says it's an regular old altocumulus undulatus that no one has taken the time to comment on or "discover" until now. One lumper at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, argues that when the photo was taken in 2006, "there was no atmospheric condition that caused a new kind of cloud to form."

The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. It may not be a new cloud, but a newly discovered cloud. Now that the Cloud Appreciation Society has a website where photographers can post their unusual cloud photos for identification, more and more people are noticing clouds and trying to learn something about them. Yay.