Gavin Pretor-Pinney - The Cloudspotters Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds

I ve always loved looking at clouds. Nothing in nature rivals their variety and drama; nothing matches their sublime, ephemeral beauty.

If a glorious sunset of Altocumulus clouds were to spread across the heavens only once in a generation, it would surely be amongst the principal legends of our time. Yet most people barely seem to notice the clouds, or see them simply as impediments to the perfect summers day, an excuse to feel under the weather. Nothing could be more depressing, it seems, than to have a cloud on the horizon.

A few years ago, I decided that this sorry state of affairs could not possibly be allowed to continue. The clouds deserved better than to be regarded merely as a metaphor for doom. Someone needed to stand up for clouds.

So, in 2004, I started a society devoted to doing just that. I called it The Cloud Appreciation Society and launched it during a lecture I gave at a literary festival in Cornwall. In case anyone at the talk felt moved to join the society, Id made some official badges, and was surprised to see a rush of people come up for them at the end.

Of course, an organisation only exists when it has a website. So, a few months after the talk, I launched the society on the Internet. Initiallylike the clouds themselvesmembership was free, and word soon spread.

People sent in their cloud photographs, which I put up on the gallery pages for others to look at. The early trickle of submissions soon swelled to a torrent. Stunning images were arriving of rare and beautiful formations: lenticularis wave-clouds over the peaks of the Swiss Alps, rippled Cirrocumulus layers in the warm hues of the sunrise, Cumulus clouds shaped like elephants, cats, Albert Einstein and Bob Marley.

Soon, I had to start charging a nominal membership fee to cover costs, since people were joining from all over the world. They contributed cloud paintings and cloud poetry to be added to the site. I started a chat area, so that visitors would finally have a forum in which to discuss important cloud-related matters.

Some members were meteorologists and cloud physicists but most had no professional involvement with the weather at all. They ranged from octogenarian ex-glider pilots to infants of just a few months old. We all know that babies are amongst the most enthusiastic cloudspotters in the world, but I was still amazed at their ability to fill in the membership form.

The love of clouds seemed to transcend national and cultural boundaries and people joined from all across Europe, from Australia and New Zealand, from Africa, America and Iraq. By the end of the first year, we had 1,800 members, in 25 countriesall united by nothing more than an appreciation of the celestial mists.

Members soon asked me to recommend cloud books suitable for the general reader. So I looked around and decided that, save the odd glossy picture book, nothing quite fitted the bill.

Which is how The Cloudspotters Guide came about. It is a guide to all the delightful and eccentric characters in the cloud family, illustrated with photographs contributed by members of The Cloud Appreciation Society. I dont present it as a meteorological textthere are already many fantastic examples of these, written by people who know a lot more than I do (and I confess to having plundered them all shamelessly). It is more serious than thatits a celebration of the carefree, aimless and endlessly life-affirming pastime of cloudspotting.