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Back of the book
The Cloudspotter’s Guide
by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. The Cloudspotter’s Guide is the inaugural publication of the Society, and offers the antidote to such irrigational thinking. Clouds are Nature’s 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. Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone has felt like a ghost for fourteen days, seven hours and thirty-six minutes. Her overprotective father tried to shield her from life’s perils — but even he had never imagined what could happen to her.
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In this humorous and instructive tour of the skies, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation 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.