Photo by Amy Coffman Phillips |
How much of fifth grade science can you remember? What are the different cloud types called? My knowledge was tested today on the most gorgeous day we've had in months when I was lucky enough to be at the Morton Arboretum with my friend and our kids. The children's garden was complete chaos with every child in the five surrounding communities all congregating there for the day, so we decided to climb a little hill and sit and watch the clouds. I have fond memories of staring at the clouds on a pretty day and trying to guess what shape they were making. My daughter humored me a bit in between trips running up and down the hill and found a snake that the cirrus clouds created (I thought it looked like a spine). My friend found a stingray made of puffy cumulus clouds. And I seemed to find mostly fish of different sizes and shapes, a group of cumulus clouds that looked like airplanes flying low, and one space ship. A psychologist has probably developed a way to analyze what we see in clouds as some type of Warshak test, but I prefer to leave that at the surface.
Image courtesy eo.ucar.edu |
Reading the sky helps us understand the weather now and in the coming hours. Today, most of the clouds were low cumulus type with a few wispy cirrus clouds much higher. I could tell by looking at the sky that there was no chance of rain today. I think of this day in contrast to the day I was on the prairie as a summer storm rolled in. On that day, we could see the dark underside of the cumulonimbus clouds as they approached. We could see the rain falling on distant fields. But what we couldn't see as the storm approached was how fast it was moving. It seemed like one moment the storm was still miles away and the next moment it was on top of us as we laughed and ran to our car. It was powerful and beautiful and an experience that I would love to have again some day.
Photo by Felicia Akman |
Entry completed for BPCP iSite request to "read the sky."
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