Customer Reviews

The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds

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We get a lot of clouds in Michigan. You know, the Great Lakes and all. Sometimes, the blue sky people come here and find our skies depressing. But I like the clouds in all their varieties. In fact, when I am forced into a morning drive to the east with the Sun directly in my eyes, I am grateful when it disappears behind a cloud. Over the years I have seen some wonderful things. I remember as a child seeing a rainbow in a circle around the Sun and being amazed by it and looking up why it was there. I didn't understand all the technical terms, but remember that it talked about ice crystals refracting the light. Even so, I only learned about the clouds in the most rudimentary way.

Storm clouds are always amazing to see. I have even seen a few tornadoes and some amazing skies when I lived in Queensland, Australia for two years. There was a cyclone when I was there and that was literally a breath taking experience. The stinging rain comes sideways and it is hard to breath facing into the wind. I could even lean all my weight back into the wind and with my arms outstretched, it easily held me up. One of the wonderful aspects of this book is the way the author shares his love of the beauties in the lest dramatic types in a way that enthuses us to go and look for them on our own.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and if you love pictures of clouds I can't recommend his website strongly enough. Really, they are amazing in their variety, drama, and beauty. This book has thirteen chapters. The first ten take us through the ten main cloud types from the low cumulous up to the cirrostratus. Before the first chapter there is a handy chart of these clouds and their common altitudes that can guide you to the relevant chapter in the book.

Each chapter has a very helpful information page that describes how to spot the cloud type, some photos of the various ways the clouds can appear, what to look for in identifying it, and how to avoid confusing it with a similar cloud (particularly the various stratus types), and it various species and varieties. Each chapter then goes on to talk about the cloud in variety of ways. The author may tell us some new aspect of cloud formation, some anecdotes about the cloud, ways to appreciate that type of cloud, how it might have been represented in paintings, poetry, and even in history. There are plenty of pictures (but to see them in color - got to the cloud appreciation society website), charts, and informative illustrations. However, this is not a technical book. It really is for fun and succeeds admirably in not only holding our interest, but also in teaching us many new and enjoyable things.

The eleventh chapter takes us through a grab bag of attendant cloud formations that are often seen with other cloud types. The twelfth chapter is ostensibly about contrails (which the author rails against), but is really an enviro-alarmist bit about how high flying jets can be contributing to global warming (right). I notice that in the very next chapter on the Morning Glory formation in northernmost Queensland (no, I haven't been to that part of the state), the author did not hesitate to take a high flying jet liner (actually a series of them) to travel half the world away to see this cloud formation. Magnificent as the Morning Glory is and how nicely this chapter concludes the book, it does bespeak the sincerity and coherence of his concerns.

This wonderful book helps me to see our varied skies in new ways. I begin to see the ten main types of clouds in my local sky and now know much more about their altitudes, how they are formed, what they say about the weather cycle we are in, as well as catching the different species and varieties and sticking them more easily into my memory. I will be consulting this handbook many more times as I gain more skill in spotting the clouds overhead.

Enthusiastically recommended.

"Blue skies, smiling at me," goes the Irving Berlin song, "Nothing but blue skies do I see." Berlin thought that was a good thing, but Gavin Pretor-Pinney would not. For him, clouds are there to be enjoyed, and they make that blue more beautiful by its being in the background. He does not feel there is anything depressing about having "a cloud on the horizon" and he sees no reason that we should link clouds with catastrophe, as in "clouds of doom", or with ill-will as in "clouds of suspicion". He feels clouds are underappreciated, and so a couple of years ago, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society, complete with badges. As he says, "Of course, an organization only exists when it has a website," and indeed the CAS has one, full of photographs and poems by members, a picture of the Cloud of the Month, and chat rooms, with this stated purpose: "If you've got something to tell us, we'd love to hear it. But only if it is about clouds. Otherwise we're not interested." Pretor-Pinney would like us all to be cloudspotters, and has produced _The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds_ (Perigee), a witty and informative volume for those who want to take an educated view of his favorite subject. He emphatically agrees with John Constable, who could paint clouds like no one else: "We see nothing truly until we understand it." The book cannot fail in its mission of increasing both understanding and seeing.

We start understanding things when we can categorize them, and over the years, observers learned there were differences in cloud types and they attached names to them. The first person to take on this task did not do so until the nineteenth century. Luke Howard, an English Quaker, in 1802 lectured his local scientific society on cloud types, and as was the Linnean fashion, sorted them into genera and species and gave them Latin names, like Cumulus and Stratus. It was a good system, but different nations and regions started adding their own cloud types and cloud names. The confusion was cleared up in 1896, the "International Year of the Clouds". Serious meteorologists formed a "Cloud Committee" and published _The International Cloud Atlas_, sorting clouds into ten genera accompanied by descriptions and photographs. Each of the ten clouds has a chapter in Pretor-Pinney's book, complete with description and lore, and photographs by members of the CAS, along with their membership numbers. For example, chapter one is on the Cumulus cloud, the low, puffy, detached clouds, the sort that children draw in their pictures: "Six year olds are generally rubbish at drawing, but being amongst the best cloudspotters in the world, they are actually quite good at drawing Cumulus." To explain the formation of the Cumulus, the author cheerfully describes the process as compared to a lava lamp, and in the meantime explains lava lamp physics as well. We think of clouds as filmy and light, but a typical Cumulus will have around 220 tons of water droplets in it. Certainly, though, not all is seriousness here. Seeing shapes in clouds is not just a child's game, and the author recommends it: "Clouds are for dreamers, and the contemplation of their shapes is a pursuit worthy of any cloudspotter... any cloudspotter who has become too sensible to see shapes in the clouds needs to re-evaluate."

Pretor-Penney has a great deal of fun with his hobby, fun that comes through in every chapter of his book. For example, in investigating the mackerel sky (a type of Cirrocumulus), he goes to the biggest fish market in London to see which fish had lent its pattern of scales to the name. He finds the mackerel sky within the scales of the king mackerel, but stops in his tracks when he realizes that the scales of the common carp reproduce Altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus, "soon to be known as a 'carp sky'". Few other people could have traveled across the world to see a particular cloud, but you can read his report on the Morning Glory, a type of Stratocumulus that forms in northern Australia in the spring, a huge roll of a cloud that can be six hundred miles long. It is favored by glider pilots who use it as surfers do an ocean wave. There are many other interesting asides here, caught with enthusiasm and humor, within the meteorological rigor. Many readers will want to keep their copy handy as it has "How to Spot..." guides for all the clouds, and how not to confuse them with others. This is one of the most entertaining reference books ever.

The Cloud Spotters Society's book is fantastic for those wanting to learn everything about those beautiful clouds we see all over the planet when we look up for them.

That said this book was lacking just one thing I was hoping there would be more of. I was hoping for more beautiful big color pictures of clouds. There were only a few pages that actually had color pictures of clouds and they were very small. But from reading the credits closely in this book on one of the more amazing small pictures, I did find out about another book, that is the most beautiful book I have ever seen! The book is RECOGNIZE from the photographer from Glen E. Friedman, it is a must have for any cloud spotter and cloud lover. RECOGNIZE gives me exactly what The Cloud Spotters Guide did not, phenomenal huge beautiful pictures of clouds, and nothing else, (other than a short politically charged introduction and afterward about the photographers career). RECOGNIZE is about the beautiful clouds, printed on 16" wide x almost 12" tall pages. These "skyscapes" which are artistic masterpieces in their own-right, are breathtaking and the perfect companion to The Cloud Spotter Guide if you were looking for great photographs of clouds.

If it's only pictures you were looking for then RECOGNIZE is clearly the book for you.

I recommend both of these fantastic books for the true cloud lovers and members of the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Knowing the name of something is not the same as really knowing it, and this book goes much further than merely identifying the ten major types of clouds, with descriptions and pictures. And the numerous species and sub-varieties within each species. And variants and adjuncts. Accessory clouds and supplementary features. Man-made and man-altered clouds.

Pretor-Pinney explains how and why and where each cloud forms, gives a little history lesson, some poetry, and some literary or painting references for almost every type, as well as a number of typically-British humourous stories. In fact the author's umbrella-dry humour takes what is a potentially twee subject matter and makes it quite charming, really.

Except for the boring Stratus nebulosus, the plain old rain cloud about which Pretor-Pinney is hard-pressed to find any poetry, or art, or positive things to say. The best he can muster is, "it's never known to make you feel elated." Classic!

In the end, the author has accomplished much more than a Field Guide to Clouds, having really brought cloudspotting up to respectibility, and giving the reader the impression that he (or she) really does "know clouds" well beyond the mere recitation of their given names.

Gavin Pretor-Pinner deserves praise for taking something so obvious as clouds, and writing a whole book. We tend to take the fluffy white (or bleak grey ......) objects for granted, and many know a little about what they are composed of, and where they come from. Mr P-P is obviously something of an expert in his field, and a real enthusiast, and has caused my thoughts to be "amongst the clouds", and in that the book has achieved some success. However, can I still name the 10 cloud types, and identify them? That is a different matter.

After a general introduction, there are chapters on each of the 10 (main) cloud types. In previous eras, clouds were seen to portend the weather. In the days of the 24-hour availability of detailed meteorological forecasts, that is now hard to believe. Knowledge of cloud formations is becoming something that we do not need to know. There are detailed explanations of weather fronts, (cold front, warm front and what used to be known as occluded fronts). However, there are no weather maps as a pictorial guide, with isobars. That would have been helpful.

Generally, I liked the book more as I progressed, but the subject matter is not `a story'. Gavin writes better when the detail is linked to little anecdotes, and he has a wry sense of humour, more to make the reader weakly smile that laugh. There are informative matters of detail, so that any reader will come away with items they never knew. The style brings life to the sometimes dry subject matter of condensed water vapour, which at times left me reeling with formation details and Latin names of the sub-species of clouds.

I found that some detail of the basic cloud types merged into each other, much as a blanket of Cirrostratus. But then again, I am not a paid-up member of the Cloud Appreciation Society - yes there really is such a society, and this book resulted from that organisation, with the author as its founder. Of more interest to me was the detail about halos, and other visual effects that can be seen. Before opening this book, I had never heard of a `sundog', and am now eager to see one.

Is the weather the same now as it has always been? Mr P-P talks about climate change from a different angle, bringing this in to ways in which we have changed our clouds. This has been done both consciously (Russian attempts to ensure that the weather is fine for May day parades), and unconsciously. In the latter category come the new types of clouds that are seen high in the sky on some otherwise cloud-free days - the contrails ("condensation trails") from jet aircraft. It is interesting to note the effect that 9/11 had climate on the USA, with no aircraft flying and causing contrails for 48 hours. This resulted in an increased average difference of day-time and night-time temperatures of 1.1 degrees centigrade in tem mediate aftermath.

The last chapter details a particular cloud formation, not one of the 10 cloud types, but a spectacular, localised cloud, known as "The Morning Glory". Impressive as this is, I found it has too much coverage, and there were many more illustrations than of more widely-occurring phenomena. Awe-inspiring - yes. Worth that amount of coverage - no.

One thing is certain, I walk more with my head in the clouds, looking at the water vapour above, below and around me with a little more knowledge and detail.

Peter Morgan, Bath, UK[...]

Gavin Pretor-Pinney's book is both witty and informative. A must-read for weather junkies and those who enjoy getting their knowledge with a dollop of humor! Buy it for all your friends!

Since reading this book my friends and family have renamed me clerd (cloud nerd). I love this book. It is written to be informative and amusing. That's the best way to learn. I remember the lectures I had where the professors made me laugh, but remember less when they stared at their shoes and mumbled.

The book describes a cloud genera per chapter, starting with the nomenclature and progressing through the science and is interspersed with all sorts of tales and anecdotes of history and art. It also goes into weird cloud phenomena such as sprites, blue jets, sun dogs and rainbows. There are beautiful pictures of clouds, science figures and art reproductions.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is even only vaguely interested in learning about what is going on above them. Gavin will draw you in and make a clerd out of you too.

Just like the author, I've always been fascinated by clouds. I find myself constantly looking up at them. I don't know about other people, but they seem just as beautiful as they always have, even the ones that will pour down. When people come across new knowledge, it usually comes with new appreciation.

The Cloudspotter's guide does that, and then some. After reading about the way they form, live, and end, my appreciation for them has truly gone through the roof. I knew they were important, but now I know that they're invaluably so. The author puts things very simply. He's no cloud physicist himself, so his text does not come across as confusing or extremely scientific.

It's easy to read, has tons of knowledge and awesome tidbits, and is a joy to read. I'd expect that younger people would absolutely love this book, assuming 2 year olds could read. :)

Definitely worth the money and the time. I'd recommend it to everyone.

This is a remarkable book, faultless in its presentation and illustrations, original and delightful throughout. Pretor-Pinney's coverage, scientific range, freshness of description and metaphorical analogies, are a delight. Among innumerable moments that have given me joy I note especially his deft handling of Piero della Francesca (p. 117), his generosity to the traditionally dismal Stratus, 'the only cloud that bothers to come down and join us down at ground level' (p. 79), and the energetic 'Dawn Dances to bring the Glory' (p.. 294). Keats and Constable and present and generously handled. Sparingly, the absent Emily Brontė produces eligiblity for possible membership of the movement in her glimpse of a celebrated Yorkshire hill rising above ground mist: 'a long line of mist winding nearly to its top ... Wuthering Heights rose above thissilvery vapour'. Pretor-Pinney's book is a treasure house, a gem that should become a classic.

While I would have prefered photos of clouds instead of drawings I have enjoyed The Clouds Spotter's Guide. I first heard about the guide from the Cloud Appreciation Society when it was listed on the Cool Tools web site. After going to the Cloud Appreciation Societies web site I just had to get the book. I think its a must have for anyone who loves clouds and wants to know more about them.