Clouds for Teachers

Thanks you to all the dedicated teachers participating in the Summer Teacher Institute offered by the Nisqually River Education Project.  "Forests, Glaciers, and Freshwater" was the theme of the three-day institute this year.  I was invited to speak this morning about observing clouds, the role of clouds in climate change, and why it's important to engage students in citizen-science cloud projects. Clouds are often neglected when we talk about watersheds, environmental stewardship, and climate change so I was glad for the opportunity to bring clouds into the conversation. Keeping an eye on our changing skies is becoming an increasingly important part of understanding our changing planet.

For those of you interested in some terrific cloud resources for your classrooms or living rooms, here are my go-to websites. (Click on the link, not the image).

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) just published its long-awaited cloud atlas this spring. This is the first ever digital edition of the atlas, which was first published in 1896 and with very few photographs. The WMO is responsible for the naming, categorizing, and description of clouds for use by professional meteorologists, aviation professionals, and amateur cloud watchers world wide. 

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The Cloud Appreciation Society: This is a less official, but extremely popular website for all things cloud--a photo gallery, cloud of the day, songs and poems about clouds, terrific newsletter, and members forum where you can find out the name of the strange cloud you just saw (altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus undulatus radiatus, for example). This London-based virtual organization boast more than 43,000 members worldwide. The founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, has done more to bring much-deserved attention to the clouds than any other person in recent years. His website and his marvelous books, A Cloudspottter's Guide and the Cloud Collector's Handbook, are well researched, easy to use, and widely available. 

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NASA Globe Observer The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) offers a free app to help you make environmental observations that complement NASA satellite observations. There are two apps--one for mapping mosquitos habitat and for collecting data on clouds. When you download the cloud app and create a passworded account (of course),  you can take photograph clouds and record sky observations and compare them images of the same clouds taken from the NASA satellite passing overhead. Cool! GLOBE is now the major source of human observations of clouds, which provide more information than automated systems.

Don't get overwhelmed! Just get in the habit of looking up at least once a day to enjoy the wonders of the sky. And remember to find your way to my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, which will be published by Mountaineers Books in late September. You can pre-order copies here. 

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Hope for the Fog Lark?

Thanks to everyone who submitted public comments on the Marbled Murrelet Long-term Conservation Strategy. Your support for the Conservation Alternative made an enormous impact. On June 4, Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz announced that she will be assembling a panel of experts of the environmental community, trust beneficiaries, and timber industry to develop win-win solutions that reach beyond the six alternatives that had been evaluated in the draft Environmental Impact Statement.

The supplemental alternative (the Conservation Alternative) has gotten much attention thanks to the excellent work of the  coalition of conservation groups who developed this alternative as well as a thorough analysis of the six "official" alternatives. The coalition includes the Washington Environmental Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Conservation Northwest, Olympic Forest Coalition, Sierra Club, Seattle Audubon, Washington Forest Law Center, and individual experts. The Marbled Murrelet could not ask for better champions.

According to the timeline of the  Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the BNR would be selecting its preferred alternative (among the six) at a special meeting in July but, with the decision by Commissioner Franz, that selection has been delayed until additional solutions are developed to improve murrelet conservation and also offset the economic and community impacts the conservation plan would have. 

For more information on this decision, read The Olympian article published on June 19. 

Coming this Fall!

You're right! This does not look like a field guide to the clouds. 

This is the cover for my soon-to-be published work of narrative non-fiction about these marvelously entertaining and enigmatic phenomena. It's part natural history, part personal narrative--like my previous book, Rare Bird, only with more physics and less tag-along field work. I spent eight years in the field studying the clouds floating over Olympia, Washington, where I live. It's cloudy 228 days a year here so I had ample time to study them. 

What can a person who knows little to nothing about the clouds figure out by just looking at the clouds? Not much. I hadn't remembered anything from school--not the Latin names of the clouds, not how they form or float, not what they would feel like on my skin. 

 I acquired shelves of books and on-call meteorologists to help me climb a very steep learning curve into the world of clouds and atmospheric science. My book is not about weather. It is about the clouds themselves and how I found my way into their inscrutable little hearts. I don't take a head-on text-book style approach, but follow my own curiosity to come at the clouds from my own angle--sideways. 

If you don't know a cumulus from a cumulonimbus, the difference between fog and mist (or even if fog is a cloud at all), or what exactly the clouds are doing up there...this is your book. 

If you're not a meteorologist, a weather buff, any kind of scientists...but a curious naturalist interested in what's going on up there...this is your book.

If you want to spend just $25 for a book that invites you to enjoy the Greatest Free Show on Earth from your own back yard and for the rest of your life...this is your book.

My book will be out in September. Meanwhile, tip you chin up just a little and take a look at what's happening in the sky. Even on a gray, rainy day, the sky can be a source of joy and wonder. 

Beware the Cloud

This headline appeared in last week's paper and I had a gleeful "I told you so" reaction. Since when were clouds of any kind stable? Here, for your amusement, is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, which will be published by Mountaineers Books this Fall. 

"In my first year of cloud watching around Olympia and western Washington, I took thousands of digital photographs of clouds, which I downloaded onto my computer. I did not take the time to change each photo’s default name, such as “IMG_5388,” or the names of the default folders, such as “124__03.”

To organize this mess and to test my cloud identification skills, I eventually created ten new folders--Stratus, Cumulus, Nimbostratus, and the rest. Once I opened the first folder of photos to drag and drop, I realized the horrible truth: paying close attention to the clouds does not guarantee you can identify them.

My first cloud stumped me--Altocumulus or a Cirrocumulus? The second--Cirrus maybe? And the third--no clue. Before long, I had cloud guides on each knee and cloud charts spread out the floor next to me. There was no way to confirm the accuracy of any of my classifications. There were no green check marks accompanied by happy bell sounds or red Xs with jolting buzzes when I dropped my photos into one of the ten folders. It was all guesswork.

Taking a less ambitious approach, I created three new folders--Layered, Heaped, Wispy--but this gross-level sorting also proved too challenging. Many of my photos seemed to include more than one type of cloud. I created a fourth folder--Mixed. And then a fifth--BWJ (Big White Jobs). A sixth--UFO (for Unidentified Floating Objects)--is where most of my first folder of clouds landed, which made my whole sorting exercise pointless.

To bring some sense of order to the chaos, I created twelve folders, one for each month of the year. Perhaps, I thought, a chronological ordering scheme would reveal hidden patterns or seasonality in my local clouds. I dragged and dropped for a few hours. When my husband got home from work, I told him about my cloud-sorting project.

He paused thoughtfully.

“What’s the difference between a February and March cloud?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m sorting them this way. To see if there is a pattern.”

“Hmmm,” he said.

He was right.

Monthly was arbitrary. Sorting them by season would make more sense, but I’d need more than a few years’ worth of photos to see any pattern.

The next morning, I dragged all my monthly folders into another folder--CLOUDS.

Not long after this, my computer crashed. The diagnosis from the repairman was “too many photographs.” My mother lode of photos had left the computer operating system with no room to update itself, stay on top of viruses, and run smoothly.

My husband suggested I start deleting photos.

I told him I could not.

Where would I begin? I could never delete my Altocumulus with the five names. Or the Mother’s Day photo of me and my two sons against a sky full of gorgeous mare’s tail Cirrus clouds. Or the Cumulonimbus that looked like a giant flying over the Black Hills west of Olympia. Or any of the pink ones. Or the one of me pretending to eat fog on Mount Rainier. Certainly not any of the BWJs, Mixed, or March clouds. What if I had captured a rare cloud no meteorologist had ever seen?

When I used the word “agony” to describe this culling process, my husband chuckled and suggested I store all my photos in “the cloud.”

I gave him a look.

“Clouds evaporate,” I said.

A few days later, he brought home a backup hard drive the size of a paperback. Now all my clouds are housed together in this small gray box under my desk, as secure and orderly as any clouds will ever be.

Text and photos copyrighted 2017 Maria Mudd Ruth