The Cloudspotter's Guide

In this humorous and instructive tour of the skies, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder The Cloud Appréciation Society, argues that we don't appreciate the clouds enough. In Britain, we are blessed with rich and varied cloudscapes - yet the smallest hint of something white and fluffy on the horizon will cast us into a national depression. The CIoudspotter's Guide is the inaugural publication of the Society, and offers the antidote to such irrational thinking. Clouds are Natures poetry, it contends, and their contemplation is good for the soul - we should applaud their ephemeral beauty and proudly live with our heads in them. The book introduces each of the different characters in the cloud family, pointing out which are the predictors of fine weather, and which of unsettled. It tells of clouds being used to predict earthquakes, and of one in Australia that glider pilots surf like a wave. It also settles such pressing questions as, which variety of mackerel is it that lends its name to the `mackerel skies' of the Cirrocumulus stratiformis undulatus? And, were a punch-up to develop between the stormy Cumulonimbus thundercloud and the drizzly Nimbostratus, who would win? Looking up will never be the same again.