Head in the Clouds Survey Results

  Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. I sent the survey to 45 people and, thanks to those of you who forwarded it, received 67 responses. Though the survey was anonymous, I can tell you that the respondents included kindergardeners through octagenarians, those with scientific backgrounds and without, those currently working in scientific fields and those writing novels of science fiction, those with large office windows and those without, outdoorsy types and indoorsy types--a mixed bag, in other words. The results were fascinating and often hilarious. Many respondents decided to cover up their ignorance humor. My kind of people!

  Please note, that two years ago, I couldn't name more than a few cloud types and could recognize but one (the "thunderheads.")  I thought I was among the ill-educated minority, but after analyzing the results of this survey, it turns out that I am among the ill-educated majority. This makes me happy because it means there is a huge potential market for my book on clouds.

  In addition to some interesting multiple-choice answers, I received quite a few wonderful stories about first memories of clouds and close-up experiences with clouds. Thank you to everyone who shared these.

   Thanks to the online polling site, Survey Monkey, I am able to post the results to most of the questions in easy-to-read charts. The open-ended questions, however, required interpretation and analysis of a different sort. I tried to be scientific, but couldn't always manage.

  NOTE: Starting on January 3, I will be posting a Cloud of the Week photograph on this blog for all you budding cloud spotters.  Happy Cloudy New Year!

  

Question 1: How many basic types of clouds are there?

  The answer I was looking for was three: the three basic types are stratus, cumulus, and cirrus. The names are based on Latin terms describing the cloud's general appearance: stratus=layer; cumulus=heap; cirrus=curl (as in wisp of hair).

  The results were interesting for a variety of reasons. Though I inadvertantly included the names of the three cloud types in Question 6--and many people pointed this out to me--my gaff did not seem to overly influence the results. Only 37% of you answered "three."  It seems that those of you who knew a little something about clouds (that is, that there are hundreds of types), might be the ones who answered that there are ten basic types: stratus, nimbostratus, stratocumulus, cumulus, cumolonimbus, altostratus, altocumulus, cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus. But, no one actually named all ten in Question 2, so I am thinking that ten was a good educated guess.

      If you answered "more than ten," you get partial credit: there are hundreds of types of clouds, but they are not considered "basic." Each of the ten cloud types (genera) come in species and varieties (like plants and animals). So, there is a type of cloud called an altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus undulatus radiatus, though most people would call it "an altocumulus" if they called it anything at all.

   The only totally wrong answer was "five." Those of you who said five were, admit it, just winging it.

QUESTION 2: How many of these cloud types can you name?

A whopping 30 respondents correctly named the three basic types--stratus, cumulus, and cirrus.  Many named several types instead of or in addition to these--cumulonimbus being most often named. The most types named by one person was 9. Many people made up names, some quite amusing. Here is a sampling:

flat ones

fluffy ones

long stringy ones

nebulous

cutaneous

strato-something

wispy and forboding

venticular

cumonubis

clouds that look like sharks

rain clouds

something starting with the letter N...

crap, okay, so I don't know many clouds....

Luckily, no one was being marked down for spelling: cumulous, cummoulous, cummulus. The correct spelling is cumulus.

Question 3. How often do you consciously look at or notice the clouds around you?

It warms my heart to know that I know no one who never looks at clouds. For those of you who answered  "rarely"--I will let you know when you can pre-order my book.

Question 4: Do you look at the clouds to help you predict the weather?

I am glad to know that the Weather Channel hasn't completely taken over our brains and connection to the living planet.  In the few years I have been studying clouds and learning to identify them, I've also been trying to understand which clouds mean high pressure and which mean low pressure, which indicate a cold front and which a warm front. I've been looking to the clouds for clues to the weather 24 or 36 hours up ahead. I can predict rain now based on presence of cirrostratus clouds and a ring around the sun. Reading the clouds is a great skill to acquire, especially if you spend time in boats, on mountains, or trying to impress people at cocktail parties. But here in the Pacific Northwest, saying "I knew it was going to rain" doesn't really impress anyone.

Question 5. Can you recall your first memory of watching clouds? 

This question split respondents almost down the middle--half being able to recall their first memory, half not.   The earliest memory was from age 3; the most common age for the first memory was 5.  The most common memories were of looking for shapes in the clouds (hippos, ducks, princesses, sailboats, dragons, animals, umbrellas were named) and of watching a "thunderheads"(cumulonimbus) of an impending storm.  

Nine described lying (sometimes laying) on their backs in their backyards, on their lawns, in hay fields, fields, or somewhere "outside" in the summer.

One person described lying outside and looking at the clouds to 'make them disappear.'

 One respondent said they were disappointed in the clouds that didn't resemble anything.

One person recalls being on a road trip as a four year old and staring out the window watching the cloud after cloud after his/her father put a strip of duct tape down the middle of the back seat "as a demarcation line between my rival sibling and me." 
  My first memory was at the ripe age of 12, when I remember getting laughs for spotting clouds that looked like Richard Nixon in profile. This would have been 1972.

Question 6: What type of clouds are these?

                                         

The correct answer is cumulus. This is a type of cumulus cloud called cumulus humilis. These are low, puffy individual clouds composed of water droplets (instead of ice crystals) and are found at altitudes of 2,000-3,000 feet. The "humilis" part of its name means it has minimal vertical extent--a humble cloud. This type of cloud indicates fair weather, but can build into a cumulus mediocris, then a cumulus congestus, then the giant cumulonimbus under certain conditions.

Question 7: What type of clouds are these?

  Most respondents correctly identified these as cirrus clouds. They are the highest clouds, occuring at altitudes of 16,500-45,000 feet, and are composed of ice crystals (not water droplets). This type of cirrus are officially known as cirrus uncinus, which means the streaks are shaped like commas or hooks. When you see these clouds, watch for a deterioration in the weather. Often these cirrus will spread, thicken, lower, becoming altostratus clouds (a mid-level layer) and then nimbostratus (a low-level rain-bearing layer).   Several of you chose "other" as your answer to this question and provided some nicknames for these clouds:

   mare's tails [an accepted nickname] 

   the long stringy ones [hmmmm..]

   long-haired democrats fleeing the party
   chiropractors

Question 8:  Everyone loves pink clouds, but can you explain why they are pink? 

About two-thirds of the respondents had a basic grasp of this phenomenon, using words such as "reflection,"  "refraction," "sun," in their answers. A subset of this group managed to include words such as "atmosphere," "angle of sun," "dust particles," "penetrate," and "wavelength." But because I included my large, extended family of liberal arts majors and my friends in this survey group, I suspect many of these responses do not actually reflect any real comprehension of the phenomenon.

Several (as in seven) respondents offered an explanation that indicated a comprehension of the phenomenon...and a willingness to put it down in writing. Before I offer the real explanation, I would like to share some of the less scientific explanations:

something with reflection and light and something i don't know

because everyone looks good in pink, even men...

sunset?

sailor's delight?

bending light into lower wavelengths

I always think of a newborn baby's blanket

they're embarrassed

a storm is coming
it has to do with the time of day
can't explain it, but feel like I have known
because the sky is on fire with my wittiness?

to make us feel nice at the end of the day?
rho scattering [this stumped me and ten pages of Google searches, then lead to a virus attack of my computer and much gnashing of teeth]

The short answer is: when the sun is low in the sky, the atmosphere scatters the short, blue-looking wavelengths of the sunlight and only the longer red- and orange-looking wavelengths penetrate the atmosphere and reach our eyes.  The scattering is a combination of refraction (bending), reflection (bouncing), and diffraction (more bending) of the light waves.

The long answer, complete with helpful analogy for sports lovers. NOTE: This explanation took me half a day to compose, with much gnashing of teeth because I realized I didn't fully understand the phenomenon adequately to be able to explain it to ya'll:

  The sunlight we see (visible radiation) includes light of differing wavelengths (imagine a rainbow or prism). From shortest to longest, the  wavelengths appear as violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  

  When these wavelengths enter the Earth's atmosphere, they collide with microscopic particles of dust, salt, soot, mist, aerosols, water (sometimes in the form of clouds). The collisions cause the wavelengths to change direction, bounce, and bend repeatedly due to what some of you referred to as  of reflection, refraction, and diffraction. Stay with me.

   During the day, when the sun angle is high, the wavelengths have less of this obstacle-laden atmosphere to penetrate. Sportfans: Think of the Earth as a baseball, with the layer of atmosphere being the leather cover. Imagine poking a set of pins of varying lengths (representing the wavelengths) straight down through the leather cover--easy, right?

  Now, in the early and late parts of the day, the sun's angle is lower and the wavelengths have to penetrate more of the atmosphere. This would be the equivalent of stabbing your pins nearly horizontally through the leather cover--not so easy, right? In fact, you are probably bleeding right now.

  Let's substitute your pins for light rays and the leather cover for the atmosphere. For most of the day, the shortest wavelengths--the violet- and indigo-looking ones--are scattered (which is why the sky isn't purplish). The blue-looking wavelengths are short, but long enough to penetrate the atmosphere and reach our eyes without being scattered by the particles of dust, soot, moisture, etc. This is why the sky appears blue most of the time. 

  At sunrise and sunset, however, when the sun angle is low, the thicker layer of atmosphere scatters the blue-looking rays, too, so they do not reach our eyes. The longer, red-looking wavelengths (your really big pins) are not scattered and travel unimpeded to our eyes--giving us pink sunrises and sunsets. 

   In the photo above of the pink clouds, the atmosphere is clear enough for the blue wavelengths to still penetrate, but the extra moisture in the clouds scatters all but the red- orange-colored wavelengths. Voila! A beautiful, cloudy sunset.

   I do hope this helped.

QUESTION 9: Have you ever experienced a cloud up-close--either by hiking to cloud-level in the mountains or at ground/sea level (fog)?

 Only two respondents answered "no" to this question. All the rest of you had great stories to share about flying through clouds or hiking through stratus (fog), nimbostratus (low rain clouds), or some higher cumulus clouds. Close-up encounters took place in a variety of locations--surf casting in Monterey Bay,  hiking in the Cascades, boating in Puget Sound, hunting in the Scottish Highlands, rowing on the Potomac River, walking to school in Port Angles, hiking in Glacier National Park, driving in Arkansas, standing atop the Empire State Building, hiking in Costa Rica and Anchorage and Huangshan "Yellow Mountain" in China.

 My favorite answers:

  "I was fascinated with being in a cloud...but disappointed when I found out that being in a cloud isn't anything like being in cotton candy or feathers or marshmallows or whatever else clouds look like." 

  "...we got very wet adn even though it wasn't raining, the fir trees were dripping water. It was like they were combing the moisture out of the cloud."

  "My first memory of being in a cloud was in the winter in a meadow and we were snowmobiling and we all stopped and wondered at its magnificence adn then drove through it which was very exciting and probably pretty stupid!"

 

Question 10 Can you identify these types of clouds? Do you know how they are formed? (The round thing is a moon, not a cloud).

  Short Answer: This is a contrail, short for condensation trail.  
 
    Of the 67 respondents, 10 answered "contrails" or "jet trails; "
    15 did not know or guess at the correct answer.
    A smattering of respondents anwered "stratus," "cirrus," "cumulus," "altocumulus," "smog," "jet stream" (which is not the same as the stream of exhaust from a jet).
    And....two smarty-pants identified the tree on the left as a Douglas-fir. It's a hemlock.

    And one respondent, unable to leave the answer blank, decided to provide information on how the moon was formed ("when an asteroid slammed into the earth and slammed a chunk loose. at least that's one theory i've heard.")

      

For those interested in more....   

Long Answer: A contrail is a long, narrow cloud produced by the exhaust of a jet engine. The engines emit hot, moist water vapor and particles of unburned fuel and soot. Most contrails form above 20,000 feet. Depending on the temperature and moisture in the surrounding air, the water vapor will condense in the cold air, form wataer droplets, then ice crystals, then a cloud. If the air is relatively warm and dry, the contrail will evaporate quickly; if the air is relatively cool and moist, the contrail may linger and grow in size. The contrails in my photo had been hanging out in the cool moist air and were expanding and being spread by the wind. These old contrails look different from straight and narrow newly formed contrails.

 

  NOTE: I didn't Photoshop this...but thanks to the respondent for the back-handed compliment.

  

  And because I just can't stop, below is a photo I took from my front yard of a distrail, short for dissipation trail. It's the inverse of a contrail. How these are formed will be discussed in an upcoming Cloud of the Week blog posting. 

Thrush music, hark!

   I was working at my kitchen table yesterday morning, reading some of what I have written about clouds over the past year, red pencil in hand. It was shortly before 8 o'clock. I noticed the light outside changing and stepped barefoot onto my back deck to take a good look at the sky (above). At this hour, with the near-solistice sun so low and muted, it was difficult to tell blue sky from gray cloud, white cloud from white sky. I couldn't discern what was in front of or behind what, what was solid what was space. There are maps like this where the shading along the borders between land and water are supposed to suggest three dimensionality, but somehow do the opposite so that Puget Sound or the Chesapeake Bay look like peninsulas.

   While I was out trying to make sense of what I was seeing, I heard what I thought was a Varied Thrush. It is a bird I first heard in California's redwood forests, before dawn, while I was searching for Marbled Murrelets. The thrush's song intrigued me; it sounded like a flying sauce taking off. It was buzzy, wobbly, and not melodic--so unlike the Wood Thrush that sung its graceful and liquid song in the Virginia woods behind my house. I have heard Varied Thrushes in late winter in our neighborhood in Olympia, though I have never laid my eyes one. 

    This morning, however, the bird seemed to be calling from my back yard. I ran on tiptoes inside to get my binoculars and, after a few buzzy calls, I saw a robin-sized bird in the top branches of the bare maple tree, it's golden breast catching the first light of the day. I would like to tell you it sang for me, but it didn't. It flew off--a dark silhouette against the eastern sky.

    I do not have the kind of camera that can capture a decent photograph of a bird unless it is sitting absolutely still and no more than four feet in front of me. But the Internet is full of wonderful, high-quality photographs of birds. This one (below) looks most like my Varied Thrush.  

Photo taken in Colville National Forest (copyright Lori Aull). Used with permission. Click here to see more of her work.

                 

Holiday Cloud Survey

   Just in time for the holidays! I've been posting blogs on clouds for a quite a while now and I thought it was high time I found out what you, dear readers, know about these natural wonders. As part of my research for my book on clouds, I've created a 10-question on-line survey designed to test your basic knowledge of clouds, solicit some happy stories, and to provide a little diversion from holiday shopping or year-end deadlines.
   Please CLICK HERE to go to the Survey Monkey site and show me what you know (or don't). Your responses are anonymous, so I cannot humiliate you in public or even over the Internet. Once I close the survey, I will post the results here.
   Feel free to forward this blog posting to your cloudspotting friends who might be interested in the survey.
  
    Thank you, all!

Clouds at the Banff Film Festival

This is a photograph from "Salt" by Murray Fredericks via the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

   What a fabulous weekend in Olympia thanks to the Banff Mountain Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday nights at the historic Capitol Theater. This festival has become a December tradition in our household and, judging from the sold-out crowd at the theater, it has become a favorite event for outdoor adventure lovers.
   The fifteen films I watched this weekend were some of the award winners selected by an international jury screening some 250 films submitted for the festival this year. These are not films about a scenic hike in the woods or a breathtaking downhill ski run in Switzerland. These films are about extreme sports, ones you are not likely to do or approve of your children doing (if you find out), the ones you are very happy to watch from the comfort of a cozy theater. For the most part, the films start very in-shape 20-to 30-year olds (almost all men this year) who just don't enough adrenaline playing by the book.
   So, we watch cavers descend into wilderness caves and squeeze through tiny passages to explore the fantastic underground word. We watch a "speed alpinist" climbing/running up the face of Eiger in record-breaking time. We watch white-water kayaks drop down hundred-foot-plus falls and through sets of churning rapids. We travel to the pristine rivers of remote Kamchatka Peninsula to enjoy the camaraderie of a bunch of guys fly fishing for 30-pound rainbow trout. We gasp at climbers without helmets or belays racing up the face of Half Dome in Yosemite. And we watch mountain bikers (some about 7 years old) zipping through magnificent forests at breakneck speed. And, if you're me, you're really watching the clouds.
   Don't laugh. It was fascinating to see how important clouds are to filmmakers. Only rarely did a film not include scenes with gorgeous clouds or with time-lapse sequences of clouds moving across the landscape. In a few films, the clouds had a serious impact on the adventures of the outdoorsman. One of the most memorable was a film called "Fly or Die," which shows what happens when you combine free solo climbing with base jumping. The athlete starring in this gripping pic realizes that his fear of falling is preventing him from solo climbing (no ropes) some of the more challenging rock faces on the planet. So, he straps a parachute on his back and heads for the hills. Now, as we watch him hang onto a thousand-foot cliff with a chalked knuckle or two, we feel like he does--at peace. When he loses his grip, he "simply" turns away from the rock face, spreads his arms and legs and free falls toward the earth. Only he calls it flying, not free falling. At just the right moment, he releases his parachute, thereby, turning dying into flying. Except when an eerie storm of thick stratus clouds moves in and reduces visibility to nothing. Then, the "free baser" as he his called, has to end his hike and descend the mountain like an unevolved earthling--on foot.

   By far my favorite film of the series was one called "Salt," which won the award for Creative Excellence this year. This beautiful, slow, personal, and contemplative film takes place on a salt-flat lake in a remote part of southern Australia. The setting is the proverbial "in the middle of the nowhere." The landscape is bleak, empty, and desolate--my kind of place. The star of the film and filmmaker is internationally acclaimed photographer Murray Fredericks who spends several weeks at time camped alone in the middle of the dry lake filming and photographing the cracked salt-encrusted mud, the sunrise, the sunset, the whirling stars, the emptiness, and, of course, the clouds. To see a clip of "Salt" (with diaphanous night clouds on a starry starry sky) click here and then select "see trailer." If you want to see his photo gallery, click here.
  Most Banff films are not released independently on DVD, which is a shame because there are the kinds of films you want to watch over and over. However, Fredericks film "Salt" is available in a variety of formats, so order here. You can get one by Christmas--or better yet, Epiphany.  
     If you want to take fabulous photographs like Murray Fredericks, go outside--way outside.

  Before the films played each night, we got to see the award-winning photographs from the Banff Mountain Photography Competition. Guess what? The Grand Prize Winner was called "Storm Clouds over Mount Aspiring." The Best Mountain Adventure photo--clouds. The Best Mountain Environment photo--clouds. The Best Mountain Landscape photo--clouds.

Mariposa Road Leads to Olympia

  Standing-Room-Only crowds aren't the norm in Olympia, but last night at Fireside Books, there was not a seat to be had to hear Robert Michael Pyle (above)tell stories from his new book, Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year. Pyle is a professional lepidopterist, naturalist, author of fifteen books and field guides, raconteur, Xerces Society founder, Kenny Rogers look alike (to some), ale-lover, and resident of Washington State's rainy Wahkiakum County.

   In 2007, Pyle left home for a year-long tour of the U.S. to see how many butterfly species he could spot and identify. "Big Year" trips have been common and highly competitive in the birding world for some fifty years (and well documented in Kenn Kaufman's Kingbird Highway and Mark Obmascik's The Big Year), but Pyle's trip marks the first such endeavor for butterflies. For anyone expecting a dry, thinly padded listing of some of the 800 North American butterflies (snore), you will be pleasantly surprised, well entertained, and laughing out loud reading Mariposa Road. Pyle makes it clear from the start that he never lets listing get in the way of meaningful encounters with butterflies in the field.

   Pyle's book is about butterflies, but you really don't need to know how to pronounce lepidoptera in order to appreciate Pyle's wisdom about the value of experiencing the natural world. When critics asked Pyle if a book on butterflies wasn't a bit "trivial" given the state of the world these days, Pyle tells us he never makes an apology for being outside with his eyes and ears open. I found this encouraging and eliminated doubts about my book on clouds being a trivial pursuit.

   Pyle traveled the country in his Honda with the front passenger seat removed so it would serve as a camper. He could have, he said, stayed with any number of lepidopterist friends in any state he visited, been wined and dined, and lead directly to the local butterfly hot spots. But he wanted to let hunch, chance, and happenstance be his guide. Pyle identified 96% of the 800 butterfly species (some in larval form) that he set out to encounter on his trip--a trip full of "grace notes--stochastic events that happen when you are open to the landscape."

  Despite Pyle's fifty years of experience studying butterflies, such guides are bound to lead to sidetrips, mishaps, near disasters, and missed opportunities. And they do. How many lepidopterists do you know who would dumpster dive after a yogurt container of valuable butterfly specimens left in a brewpub by accident or, make a special trip to Elvis Presley's "Graceland" to place a copy of Orion magazine containing an article called "One Nation Under Elvis" on The King's grave? I can name but one.

    With Pyle's depth of knowledge, environmental ethic, knack for storytelling, and trademark gentle and self-deprecating humor Mariposa Road promises to be one of the best natural history reads this year.

   

The Sense of Placed and Displaced

   Today I am reading essays from a discussion course on Discovering a Sense of Place published by the Northwest Earth Institute in Portland, Oregon. My interest in this issue comes from my desire to feel at home and rooted in the Pacific Northwest after just four years of living the Wet Life. Since I do not have a lifetime, or even half of one left to become a native or "old timer," I am grateful for any short cuts that come my way.

   The discussion course features thirty-five essays, a scattering of poems, discussion questions, quizzes, and some lovely illustrations tucked in here and there. One of the essays is an excerpt from Wallace Stegner's Where the Bluebird Sings (Random House, 1992). The excerpt is less than three pages long, but it has taken me most of the afternoon to read because it contains truths worth pondering.

   Stegner writes about being a "placed persons," people who live where they grew up and where their families have lived for generations, "lovers of known earth, known weathers, and known neighbors both human and nonhuman."  

   In America, there are "placed people" and "displaced people"--the traveler, the explorer, the adventurous, restless, seeking, asocial or antisocial person who is always in motion.

   "I know about this," writes Stegner. "I was born on wheels...I know about the excitement of newness and possibility, but I also know the dissatisfaction and hunger that result from placelessness. Some towns we lived in were never real to me. They were only the raw material of places, as I was the raw material of a person. Neither place nor I had a chance of being anything unless we could live together for a while. I spent my youth envying people who had lived all their lives in the house they were born in, and had attics full of proof that they had lived."

  The discovery of a sense of place (at least in the discussion course book I have) is accomplished with particular tools. Some people make maps, others plant trees, walk or ride a bike everywhere. Others explore their valleys, local watersheds, backyards, or empty lots in their neighborhoods. Some track migrating birds, seasonal weather changes, or logging plans. No one seems to use clouds as a tool. Which is just plain wrong.

   Being a displaced person myself (by choice and/or whim), I am finding clouds the best teachers for learning how to be settled, still, and rooted. Clouds have none of these qualities. They epitomize restlessness on a grand scale. How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? You don't. But to appreciate how dynamic clouds are you have to be still. You have to sit still, stand still, lie still. Even walking or biking or driving while watching clouds diminshes their essential quality: movement.

    Sure, you can stand still anywhere on the planet and watch clouds. But unless you stand still in all those places for a month, a season, a year...you won't learn much about your local clouds.

   Now that the leaves of the bigleaf maples, alders, and oaks have succumbed to the nip, bluster, and drench of the October and November, I am seeing--as if for the first time--the pattern of bare, branches against the soft white clouds. I look out my front window and contemplate the light and the dark, the restless and the rooted, the source of the rain and one of its beneficiaries, the mist-like droplets aloft and the hair-like hyphae underground, the displaced and the placed.