A CONSTANT pageant gliding across our skies, clouds are nothing more than ephemeral patches of water droplets or ice crystals. Yet their influence on many aspects of life, past and present, is indubitable and millions of us around the globe are entranced by these transient, evocative aspects of Nature.
Such is the British Isles’s location, predominant winds rush in from the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in clouds being regular visitors to our shores. However, we’re not alone: in fact, NASA’s Earth Observatory estimates that about 67% of our planet’s surface is covered in cloud most of the time.
The classification of clouds, which introduced such poetic names as cumulus and cirrus, has existed for more than 200 years. We have an amateur meteorologist to thank for dreaming it up. In doing so, he afforded the world its first language of the skies.
Luke Howard, a London pharmacist and passionate about meteorology, was a member of the Askesian Society—a London-based debating club for scientific thinkers—and presented his Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, at a meeting in December, 1802. He chose Latin—regarded as the language of science—for naming the different forms of cloud. Cirrus, meaning curl of hair, cumulus, which translates to heap, and stratus, for something spread, were among the names he selected. Realising that clouds could also change their form and turn into an intermediate category, he introduced other terms accordingly, such as cirrostratus.
Today, his terminology is still used worldwide by meteorologists—a fine achievement for a self-taught man. The son of a successful businessman, Howard was born in London in 1772. Educated at a Quaker school in Oxfordshire, his fascination with climate was sparked by his experience in 1783, when, aged 11, he witnessed Nature at its wildest.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
