The Cloudspotter's Guide | Gavin Pretor-Pinney | Talks at Google

Welcome to the New York Author Series at Google. We're pleased to welcome Gavin Praterpenny. Yeah, said it right. The founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. It's an online community for cloud lovers to post pictures, learn facts and discover the best places in the world to go for cloud spotting. The CAS one, the 2005 Yahoo. Sorry, weird and Wonderful Award. So if we get a Weird and Wonderful award, that can win it as well. Gavin is a former science nerd and graduate of Oxford University. He's been obsessed with cloud since childhood. He's a journalist and co founder of the Idler magazine. His writings appeared in the Telegraph, the Evening Standard, Harper's Queen and other British publications. He currently lives in London and he has a couple books out which I think most of you are holding. The Cloud Spotters Guide and the Flying Saucers Photo Book. So authors at Google is proud to announce and please help me welcome Gavin Pretropeni.

Great, thanks. Thanks, Cameron. Thanks for coming along, everyone. I thought what I'd do really would be keep it quite simple and just show you some nice pictures of clouds and say why I like them. But I thought before I did that maybe I should explain what the Cloud Appreciation Society is and how that came about because I guess it's sort of an odd sounding idea. A friend of mine was running a literary festival in Cornwall, down in the southwest of England, and she asked if I'd like to do a talk about clouds because she knew that I loved them. And I said yes, of course. But I got a bit worried in the weeks running up to the talk because it occurred to me people always complain about clouds, they moan about them and it seemed to me anyway, there would be a big danger of no one coming along to the talk. This is before I started the society, before I did any books about clouds. I thought the one way to be sure people would come to a talk about clouds is to give it a really weird name. So I called it the inaugural lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society just to make it sound kind of weird and intriguing. And it worked in the sense that everyone came along, it was all full. Problem was everyone came up to me afterwards and said, how do I join your society? And so I thought actually, maybe I should just start one. Maybe I should start a real society and put up a website. So I did that. I put up a website. When you join the society, you get a badge. I think they call it a pin here. And yeah, I thought it's important to have a badge so that you can wear that with pride. Very important also to have a number. So when you become a member, you get a certificate with your number on it says the Cloud Appreciation Society. We do hereby certify that the person's name was elected as a member of this society on the date and will henceforth seek to persuade all who listen on the wonder and beauty of clouds. So there's a kind of campaigning element to this and I hope to convince you a little bit about the wonder and beauty of clouds in this talk. A lot of the. Well, firstly, I should just say this. Once I put this on the web, it expanded in the way that things can, when they go on the web, they just take on this sort of viral growth which just goes by itself and, you know, it's spread and spread. We've now got 10,500 members in 48 countries around the world. And a lot of the photos I'm showing, or all the photos I'm showing are photos that have been sent in to the website by members and visitors, because that's one of the things I encourage, is people to send in photographs. They go up on the website's gallery post. And another thing I really encourage is people to send in clouds that look like things, because that's one of the really important parts of cloud spotting, is finding shapes in the sky. So I've got a bit of an emphasis because this book, Hot Pink Flying Saucers and Other Clouds, is a little collection of our favorites of the clouds that look like things. And so I put a bit of emphasis on the ones I'm showing of the ones that look like stuff, because they're kind of funny. In the uk it's called a pig with six legs. And other clouds, they chose a different picture for the COVID So, yes. When. Well, why don't we just go through some clouds or just tell you about some of the ones I like. Good one. To start with is this one, I think, this fluffy little fellow. I don't know if we've got any cloud spotters in the audience here and whether anyone here knows what type of cloud. It's a Latin name, what type of cloud this is. It's a very common cloud you see a lot on a sunny day. Anyone got any ideas who said that? Cumulus. You're completely right. There you go. Badge for you, sir. Yeah, totally. It's a cumulus cloud. That's just the Latin. These Latin names sound a bit kind of. Well, they sort of put you off a little bit, but it's just a Latin for stacked, hump, clamp Clumped or heaped. It's just the way these look. And they are, you know, they're very sort of friendly. They're fair weather clouds. They form when it's sunny. Cumulus cloud never hurt a soul. I'm rather fond of them because they seem to me like the generic cloud. If you were to close your eyes and imagine a cloud, it would probably be a cumulus. And sometimes they're small. When they're small, they're called cumulus humilis, meaning just humble in Latin. The little ones. One of the things I like about besides these are the kind of being, but the basic clouds. I like the way that whenever kids do a drawing of like a house, you know, with a family next to it, they always put cumulus clouds in the sky, these puffy kind of clumps of cloud. And I think that no picture of a house with front door and a chimney, levitating family, none of those are complete without some cumulus clouds in the sky. So that's why I like them as well. They also look like the most comfortable clouds. These would be good ones to lie on. When I was young, I used to think, what would it be like to sort of lie on a cloud? It must be like the kind of softest thing imaginable. And I think it's the fact that they look comfortable like this. They look so kind of inviting, which is why there must be the reason why it's always cumulus clouds that seem to appear in religious imagery. Like when I was living in Rome. I lived in Rome for seven months and I got this prayer card from the street, and it was a prayer for the souls in Purgatory. And you can see there's the souls in the flames of Purgatory down below, and then Jesus, Joseph and Mary up there looking rather pleased with themselves. And they're nice, comfy. These are like the sofas of the saints, these clouds. So I like that kind of symbolic role for them as dividers between the kind of divine world and that of us sort of mortal sinners below. This one has some cumulus clouds. Look like a cowboy. How they were sent in. I can't actually see the pictures that are coming up. So they're as much as a surprise to me as they are to you. Oh, yeah. The Michelin man robbing a bank, An elephant sneezing. So cumulus clouds are good ones for finding shapes because they've got sharp edges to them. So they've got clear, defined kind of profiles. And so they are. And also the shapes change Quite quickly because these clouds are in constant motion. And so you can find a lot of shapes if you're lying on your back in the park staring up at some clouds. These are good ones to stare up at if you want to find shapes. That's Santa Claus delivering some presents. I guess it's got a slightly odd bunch of reindeer, but I thought I'd put a kind of topical one in there. Now, when there are medium sized cumulus clouds, and they're called mediocris, it's just the Latin for sort of medium. And it's quite interesting when you hear that one of these clouds, if you were to add together all the droplets of water in one of these clouds, they would weigh the same as 80 elephants. There's quite a lot of water there and it's quite heavy. And it occurred to me when I first heard it, how does it all get up there? How does all that water get up in the air and stay up in the air? What makes it happen? And I realized that one way of explaining it is to talk about lava lamps. When you got a lava lamp, you have the light at the bottom of the lamp, and that warms the oil, which is there sort of not mixing with the water. You've got the oil, the lamp warms it, it expands a little bit and it becomes a bit less dense than the water, and it floats upwards through the water. And then when it gets up near the top, it cools again, it shrinks again, becomes a bit more dense and sinks back down. And it's this kind of movement of the oil is known as convection current. A little bit of a similar thing happens outside on a sunny day because it's air, not liquids, gas is not liquids. But the sun warms the ground, and some bits of the ground heat the air above it quicker than others. So this sort of field, like that plowed field, will warm up the air above faster than a bit of woodland. And for that reason, the air above that field expands a little bit and kind of rises up in a bubble. And it's a little bit like a kind of invisible man rising up off the ground. And when it gets to a certain height, it can cool enough for the moisture in it to form into little droplets of water, which is what the cloud's made up with. It's a little bit like a kind of white toupee magically appearing on this invisible man's head. And then in the wind, in the kind of summer's breeze, because this is why they're sunny weather clouds in the summer breeze, you can. This toupee can be kind of plucked off and can blow along in the wind. One of the most pleasurable parts of a lovely summer's day is just watching the. The clouds drift along like enormous sheep in the breeze. Sometimes these clouds line up in streets, they're called. Yeah, cloud streets, they're called, and they are like the Roman roads of the sky. And sometimes they are tall. When they're tall, they're known as cumulus congestus clouds. And it's this cloud type, which was the cloud that appeared in the first example of cloud pornography. It was by Correggio 1530, somewhere around there. And it's called Jupiter and IO and it's one of a series of three paintings about Jupiter and about how he. It's about the loves of Jupiter. And this is when Jupiter came down to seduce IO, who is one of his wife's priestesses. She's immortal. And he came down to seduce her, and he was a bit worried that his wife would catch him at it, so he thought the thing to do is to hide myself in a cloud, to disguise myself as a cloud. And you can see his face just kind of emerging from the kind of dark cloud and his puffy hand around EO's waist. Clearly, EO is an early cloud spotter, and you can see that I think of him as a kind of cumulus congestus cloud because he's dark and these clouds because they're tall. When you're underneath one, a lot of the sunlight gets scattered out and gets blocked from reaching you, and so they look dark on the base. So, yeah, there it is. Cumulus congestus cloud. First example. Sadly, the last example of cloud pornography. DOG BARKING is an example of cumulus congestus cloud at work. This one is one of my favorites. Oh, and this one isn't one of my favorites. I like this one, though. It's a bear trained in the cruel art of duck juggling, banned in many parts of the world. Some people find that rather upsetting. I hope I haven't upset anyone. Yes. No, it's a different cloud I'm going to show with my favorite one. So I'm on to the next type of cloud that I like. And I don't expect anyone to really necessarily recognize this one. If anyone happens to know it, stick your hand up. Who said that? Nice try, but no cigar or badge. But it could be, but it's not. It's actually stratocumulus, that cloud. It's like a cumulus, but it's when they've joined out into a layer. So it's a sort of stratus. It's like a layer of cumulus clouds. I'm not going to say too much about these other than just show you a few pictures. There you go. Stratocumulus. So sometimes clouds express themselves in the negative. This is Blue Zombie. You see what I mean? A hole going on. So a hole in a stratocumulus layer can cause a shape. The Grim Reaper on the horizon. Obviously photographed from a plane. You would be feeling perhaps a little bit nervous if you looked out the window and saw the Grim Reaper, the horizon. This is a fox on stage. I don't know if you can see that, really. It's like there's his two ears, his mouth. He's kind of facing that way, barking some sort of song to the audience. And he's being lit by the floodlights up there. And you kind of looking from the side of the stage. Anyway, that's how I see it. Yes. And this one's. Can anyone recognize that? Salvador Dali, did you say? Yeah, absolutely right. Salvador Dali. Some people say Billy Connolly, but I prefer Salvador Dali. Extremely right. Yeah. And you should get a pen for that. Review the book. So, yes, Salvador Dali, that's one of my favorites. I just like the detail of his. Of his moustache. Do you know what I mean? Curling there. And it's all in the details of these things, as far as I'm concerned. So, yeah, on to the next type of cloud. Anyone recognize that? Who said what? Nice try. You might be interested in having a go at this one. Yes. In fact, I'm going to bump the prize up a little bit. Iron on embroidered patch. Put that on your. You can put it on the elbow of your jacket. All right. Something like that. Yeah. Wherever. Cumulonimbus cloud. So these ones I like because they're really. So these are the exciting ones. Do people remember Top Trumps? Did you get those in the States? Those card. That card game? No. Okay, well, I won't do that one then. But this is like. If this is sort of the scary cloud, really, they're enormous, for starters, so they will reach 10, 12 miles up into the sky. One of these is estimated as containing the power of 10 nuclear bombs. And they're where thunder and lightning and hailstones are created. And they often have this very distinctive anvil shape. So the name for that in Latin is incus, which is just a Latin for an anvil. Blacksmith's anvil. And that's because they grow so high, they get to a stage, they get to a point in the atmosphere where. Where the temperature changes, and it's like a ceiling, like an invisible ceiling to cloud growth. And the cloud can't grow any higher to get through that. And it just expands, spreads outwards, like kind of smoking a pipe in a greenhouse. It just kind of spreads out at the top. Sometimes they line up in storm fronts like this. Someone's photographed from an aeroplane. And then it's worth saying that one thing that pilots do, one thing they don't do, is fly through these clouds. They do everything they can to avoid flying through a cumulonimbus storm cloud. But there was one guy who was an American who, in 1959, he didn't fly through one. He was flying over the top of one in his jet. He was just on a routine flight, flying over the top of one, and he had a bit of a problem with his plane and he ended up falling through the cumulonimbus cloud. And it was not a very nice. It was not a very good day for him. Put it this way. Firstly, he heard this big boom in the back of his plane, like a sort of terrible sound that he knew something very bad had happened. And all his controls went like that, all his dials. And he thought, right, okay, the engine sees something disastrous, something catastrophic has happened. I'm going to have to engage the electricity supply so I can get the controls back. And so he pulled on the emergency electricity supply deployment lever beside him and it came off in his hand. So he thought, right, I've got no option but to eject. But the problem was he was up at 47,000ft, which is up a high altitude for cruising jets. And he was only wearing a summer flying suit. He had no. You know, no one has survived from ejecting at that height unless they've been in a. In a pressure suit. And he was just in a summer flying suit. But he had no choice in the matter. It was either going to be. He was in a. Like a. He was just going to fall to the ground. So he was pulled his cords and came flying out of the cockpit. And the first thing he experienced was the temperature. It was minus 51 degrees centigrade, excruciatingly cold. The pain of feeling that. And then the pressure change as he came out of the pressurized cockpit into 47,000ft air pressure. There was this terrible expansion of his body. He was spinning and flailing around to sort of disorientate him, but he had Some oxygen on his face. He had, like, an emergency oxygen supply, so he kind of stayed conscious. And as he was spinning, he looked down and he looked at his body, and he looked like he was in a stage of advanced pregnancy from his body expanding in this low temperature, having come from inside the. Inside the cockpit. So he, you know, had a very bad start to the journey, but it actually got worse because he was falling down, and he started to fall into the top of this cumulonimbus cloud, the icy top. It's made out of ice crystals up at the top there. So it's kind of a wispy. It's a wispy effect. And he started falling down into this, and it began to get darker and darker because as he went into the center of the cloud, it became more and more. There was less and less light was able to be getting in there. It's all scattered away. Began to get darker and darker. He began to get less and less visibility. And he had a parachute which had an automatic deployment sort of set up on it, so when you get to the right height, the parachute opens. You don't have to pull the cord. So he was spinning around in there, and he was thinking, is this parachute going to open? I don't even know. I'm having such a bad day. It might not even. But then it did, and he could feel it. And he felt the tension in the risers going up. And he thought, right, okay, parachute's opened. Everything's looking all right now. Things are looking up. But that was just as he was getting into the middle of the cloud. And one of the characteristics of these clouds is that in the center, they have these extremely violent vertical currents of air going up and down. And he described afterwards the. I've got it written down here, described afterwards the experience of first kind of reaching this air current blasting upwards. He said it came with incredible suddenness and fury. It hit me like a tidal wave of air. A massive blast fired at me with a savagery of a cannon. I went soaring up, up and up, as though there would be no end to its force. And then the hailstones started, and he started getting pummeled by these hailstones. And there was so much water as well that was around, that he felt in danger of drowning because he'd now got his mask off, the oxygen had run out, but he could breathe because he got low enough, but he was in danger of drowning, and he vomited and was bleeding from his ears. It was all to do with this. The pressure changes and being hit by these hailstones. He said this was nature's bedlam. A black, ugly cage of screaming, violent, fanatical lunatics beating me with big, flat sticks, roaring at me, screeching, trying to crush me or rip me with their hands. And the thunder and the lightning started. And he said the feeling of the lightning was like an explosion. It wasn't a sound, it was an explosion hitting him. But he did emerge from the base of the cloud. And the fact that he wrote that means we know that he survived, obviously, given that away. But he came out the bottom of the cloud and managed to land in a pine forest, and he landed in a pine forest. And like any good pilot, when they do an eject, when they get out of the plane, they always check their watch just before they do so, because they can get an idea of when they're likely to hit the ground, if they do that as part of the sort of training. So he'd done that. And when he reached the ground in his parachute and landed in this forest, completely disorientated, the storm was still raging. Now he was down below it. He managed to look in the kind of dark light, he looked at his watch, and normally a descent like this would take 10 minutes to get down from that height. It took him 40 minutes. He was stuck in the middle of this cloud being blown up and down in the same way that a hailstone gets blown up and down within the cloud. A hailstone, it gets blown up and down and it gets covered in like a gobstopper, you know, those sweets. It gets covered in layers of ice. He had. This had happened to him. He was covered in bruises. The doctors were amazed that he survived, covered in wilts from being pummeled by these hailstones. And there was one thing they couldn't work out when he was in the hospital and recovering, and they couldn't work out what these lines were on his body, these red sort of geometric lines, until they finally worked out that that was where his body had expanded. It had pressed on the inside of his loose flying suit. And these were the stitching marks left behind. And so he. It looks rather as if he just hurt his little finger in that picture. But the doctors, as I say, were amazed that he survived. This is like some time after. So you don't want to get too close to these clouds, put it that way. When this one is a cuma nimbus cloud, as it's died down, it is, of course, as we can all see, Thor, the mighty thunder, Norse God of thunder, holding up his thunder Hammer in the air. We can all see that. And of course, as I'm sure you will all recognize, he has under his arm there, his daughter thrud. What else do we have? Oh, yes, sometimes these clouds. One thing I like about humanimbus clouds is the way they are sort of factories for other features, cloud features. This one sent in by Mike Hollinghead is of a shelf cloud which is around the base of a very, very violent storm. You can get this sort of cloud. It's where the air that's rising up in the center also comes back down and it splays out when it hits the ground. And as it does so burrowing up the air around and causing like a shelf of cloud like this, you've got tuba, which are the beginnings of water spouts and tornadoes and dust devils at their mildest. But four of those up in a row like that is not something you see very often. It was something that would happen on a storm front. And then Mumma or mammatus clouds are another favorite that are associated with these cumulonimbus clouds. There's a particularly dramatic one from John Olson there, Nebraska. The more dramatic the thundercloud. These appear often on the underside of the anvil of the cloud. And the more dramatic the thundercloud, the more kind of buxom, the mama or the mammatus clouds that are associated with it. Named after the Latin for udders. So yes, on to a next one. I don't think. I'm not even going to ask you. This one's too weird. People won't recognize it. Altocumulus lenticularis is the name of this cloud. I like them because they look like flying saucers, simple as that. If that's a flying saucer, then this one is a mothership, I guess. And the way these clouds form, there's a kind of interesting thing. I just tell you quick, briefly about how these clouds form because there are clues here in these two pictures because these are like mountainous regions. And these lenticular clouds, as people call them, form in mountainous regions because it's all to do with the air reaching an obstacle like a mountain or a hill and having to go upwards to go over it. The diagram here, only two of those are clouds, of course, the diagram. You can see that the airflow goes up and rises to go over the peak of the mountain. And sometimes it can take on this kind of wave like shape. And in the lee of the peak and at the crest of each of these invisible waves of air, a lenticular cloud can form. So I Just say, when I was living in Italy, I was very interested to go to Arezzo and I was noticing the frescoes by Piero della Francesca up on the walls and I thought, wait a minute, he's not doing your average cumulus cloud like everyone else. Piero della Francesca painted lenticular clouds. You can see they're the same kind of UFO clouds in the background of his frescoes. And again, there must be an early cloud spotter. And then I discovered that he grew up at the base of some mountains in the center of Italy. And probably when he was young, he would see these clouds up in the sky and they made an impression on him. He says how I kind of make sense of the reason why he chose to do these odd clouds. Yes. So they look like UFOs. There's a good example. It's the one that's on the COVID of the book caught, but looks particularly dramatic by the way that it's caught in the light. But this one's like a sort of cloudship enterprise version, final cloud type. Before I show a little film. I've got a little film I'm going to show at the end. But I wonder whether anyone knows what this cloud is. You've already done one. Any other ideas? Who hasn't got a badge yet? It's named after the Latin for a lock of hair. That might not mean anything. Begins with this. Who said cirrus? Have you had a badge? No, you haven't. Have you? In that case, there you go. You can have the calendar. Cloud Appreciation Society Calendar 2008. So it is indeed the cirrus cloud. And this is one of my favorites. I just find them the most beautiful of all the kind of common clouds. They're, as I say, named after the Latin for a lock of hair. They actually consist of cascading ice crystals. So from up at the top of the part of the sky where clouds form, these clouds begin and they fall. These ice crystals fall and cascade downwards. And as they fall, they pass through different layers of the atmosphere which can be moving, have different winds and be. Have be different in terms of their temperature. And it means that the cloud has this wavy effect. And it's because the consist of ice crystals. They have this more kind of translucent, see through appearance to them. Sometimes they look quite confused like that. That would be a cirrus in tortoise cloud. They're good for movement. So this is a skateboarder doing tricks. You see that good kind of interaction between cloud and landform here. Yeah. As I say clouds, cirrus clouds. Are good for things that are moving. Because they have this kind of blurry appearance to them. That one's a dragonfly. They're also interesting when they join together and form into a layer Called a cirro stratus. Because you get these weird ob optical effects. This here down there is what's known as a sun dog or a mock sun. And it's all to do with how the sunlight is refracted by the tiny ice crystals that make up these clouds. There are a number of these different effects, Like a halo around the sun or around the moon. It's known as a 22° halo. Not very kind of evocative or romantic name. This one looks to me like a cloud smile, really. It's very high up in the sky, around the zenith and just above where the sun is. You can get an arc of colored light like this. Like a sort of upside down rainbow. But high up in the sky Rather than down near the ground Like a rainbow is. Again, very. Well, not a very evocative or romantic name for this is the circumzenithal arc. I prefer some kind of hippie thing like cloud smile. That hasn't caught on that one. Then cirrocumulus Are lots high little clumps of cloud Known as a mackerel sky. Another kind of beautiful appearance, I think, for these high clouds. So then I'm just going to talk about and show you this little film about this one cloud that I went across the world to go and see. And all my friends thought I was nuts when I said, I'll tell you how it happened. I was looking through a book. I was leafing through a book of cloud photographs, you know, as you do. And I came across one. I came across this one looks like. Well, I just thought it looked cool, you know, this long tube of cloud with these sort of weird tubes behind it. And I read it. It said, the morning glory cloud. The fanciful name of this phenomenon conveys. Sorry. The fanciful name of this phenomenon conveys the feeling of elation which its passage arouses. And I thought, that's quite cool. A cloud that's named after the sort of feeling you get as it flies over you. And I read on, and I found it forms in burktown, which is this little town in the middle of northern queensland in the outback in australia. And I thought maybe it's rather difficult Because I wanted to go and see this cloud. I thought it was a little bit unlikely that I could go all the way to australia to go and see a Cloud. But as I found out more about it, my kind of desire to go and see it became more sort of urgent really, because I discovered that glider pilots congregate in this little town. As I say, it's in the middle of the outback in northern Queensland at the top of Australia. They congregate at the time of year when this cloud tends to form and they go up in their planes and they surf it like surfers on a wave. Because this cloud forms in a kind of wave of air that travels along about 35 miles an hour. They get up in their planes on the front of it and can go long distances and high speeds surfing this cloud. And I thought, cloud surfing, that is a cool idea. I quite like the idea of hanging out with these glider pilots, do you mean? And having beers with them, waiting for the perfect cloud, you know, this sort of version of some cloud version of a surf movie. And. And I managed to kind of wrangle things, doing an article, making some little TV programs for Channel 4. And I managed to get out there. End of September, beginning of October is when this cloud forms. So I got there around that time and was sort of. I don't know, it was a little bit of a shock when I arrived in Burktown. This is sort of downtown Burketown. 178 people live there. And the flying doctor comes once a week. Not a lot goes on. There's a restaurant, Morning Glory Restaurant, closed for the two weeks I was there. Yeah, I was there for two weeks because I wanted to be sure that, you know, I would be able to see this cloud. I thought two weeks has got to be long enough. And I got up every morning very, very early because the thing about it is that it forms really early in the morning, this cloud. It arrives at dawn. I thought, well, every morning I get up. But the problem was I'm not a very good morning. I find it quite hard to get up in the morning. And I find it pretty hard getting up at like 4, 4:30 every morning when I was there. And I would go out onto the savannah. It's very, very flat in, in this area of Australia. Go out to the savannah and I'd look off to the eastern sky where the sun was rising in the hope that I'd see the sort of first signs of this cloud arriving. Because it looks like a kind of dark line on the horizon as it begin, you can see it sort of arriving. I do this every morning. I'd get up and it wouldn't come. It wasn't coming there's nothing there. It was cloudless sky every day, blue sky. And I think blue skies are boring. I was sort of hoping for this cloud on the horizon, but it wasn't turning up. And I started getting a bit sort of stressed about it, to tell you the truth. You know, there was nothing going on in this place. It was just sort of everyone hanging out. But I was aware that I couldn't really go home, having gone across the world, you know, and say, but, oh, it didn't come, Sorry, no, it didn't arrive. I don't think that would go down well. So I was finding it quite difficult. And everywhere I went in the town, which is like only three places to go, the pub, the post office, the cafe here in the post office, for instance, everywhere I went it seemed to be there were these pictures up on the wall, these photos up on the wall of this cloud. It was a little bit like, you know, in a pizzeria and they've got a picture of Robert De Niro coming in, eating the pizza. I felt like this is like this visiting dignitary that came to town and everyone proudly put their photo up on the wall. But it just sort of served to get me more and more kind of worked up about the fact that it wasn't coming. And all the glider pilots who were there were saying, look in their Australian accents, which I won't try and do. They were saying, look, it's quite possible, it does happen quite a lot that gliders come here for a two week sort of time. The cloud doesn't arrive, the morning glory cloud doesn't show up. And then they say, okay, fine, I'll stay on for an extra week. They call back home and change things. They've driven like thousands of miles with their glider towed behind them in their four wheel drives. So they stay an extra week, it still doesn't show up. And then they have to go home. And then they would always say, of course the day after they leave it would turn up. It suddenly occurred to me that this could actually happen to me. And then someone suggested that I needed to speak to Dawn. Dawn was an old Aboriginal lady who lived on this island just off the coast because this is on the coast of Queensland and there's a little island, Bentinck Island. And they said, dawn does a dance and it's a dance that brings the wind that carries the morning glory cloud. So you might want to try seeing it. Might want to go over there and have a word and see what happened. And I was like desperate at this stage. I'm like, dawn, dance. Yep, great. I'll go over there, I'll try it. And so here's dawn on the beach. Two of these. This is in one of the other photos, little films, not the one I'm going to show you. This is one of the other ones. So I just have to describe it. It was kind of. Or I can do flick backwards and forwards. There's a lot of stamping of the feet, clapping of hands and shouting. And the other ladies who were there were saying, can you feel it? The wind is picking up. And I was like, well, it's a bit of a breeze, but I guess, I don't know. The next morning, of course, it didn't come again. So I was thinking, well, I've run out of options now. But the people in the town, the locals said there are a couple of things that you should look out for, which are indicators that the cloud might be coming the following day. One of them is in the pub, the one and only pub in the town. The beer fridges have glass doors and when it's moist enough, they sort of frost up. They go frosty. That's an indication that the cloud. There's enough moisture in the air for the cloud to form. And the other one is the cheap cafe. The cheap tables in the cafe, they curl upwards in the corners. That again, if you see that, that's an indication that it's quite likely the cloud's going to come. So, as I say, it hadn't come the next day, but later that afternoon I went into the pub. Hello. Things are looking a bit more positive. And in the cafe, curling up at the corner of the tables, and it did calm. Then it came the next day and we went up in a plane. I went up in a plane. I'm not a glider, so I just went up with a plane and filming at the window to see the guiders doing this surfing of clouds. And I kind of interviewed them and I got to hear what they had to say about it and basically did. This little film is about what it's like to surf a cloud. So if you're ready with the dvd, let's just show it. These glider pilots are about to go surfing, surfing on a wave of air which forms around a cloud called the Morning Glory. The cloud is in the shape of an enormous tube and rolls in at first light over the coast of Queensland from Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria. It offers what's got to be the most exciting gliding experience in the.

You get on it, come over the face and you can surf down. You can have a wing in the cloud and surf right down to the bottom edge. With the absolute smoothness, being able to travel at high speed. The barest movements of the controls. That's completely different to how you. You normally fly a glider.

Very often you'll get a very strong primary cloud which rolls along very quickly.

You can jump back from the first primary wave off into secondary and third, fourth and extend it like that. There's times in a. I reckon I've probably done about 500 kilometres. The chances of something bad happening are high. You're flying at quite low altitudes over remote areas and they pull the crocodiles.

If a surfer were to go too far into the back end of the wave, he wipes out equally. We wipe out two, but I think with probably more disastrous consequences.

I think you'd only have maybe a dozen people in the world that really have done it. It is unique, that's for sure. The word hasn't spread much yet. It's good to share it with everybody, but I wouldn't like to see it becoming like a traffic tune.

Generally 10 or 15 minutes into the flight, that the sun comes across the top of the cloud. And when you look back at that site with this fantastic golden sun breaking behind it, you'd swear that you're in heaven. It's that good.

Yeah. So. So I don't think. I don't think any society is complete unless it's got a manifesto. Very important to tell people what you stand for. So I'm just going to read out and read that out to you right now, if I can find it. The manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society. We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them. We think the clouds are nature's poetry and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone has a good view of them. We pledge to fight blue sky thinking wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day. We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere's moods and they can be read like those on a person's face. We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save money on psychoanalysis bills. And so we say to all who listen, look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds. Thanks very much. Got time for one or two questions if anybody has any more of. You haven't. Yeah. Okay.

So you showed a handful of artists.

That you enjoy their representation of clouds. 1.

I was curious what your opinion of Turner was. Find out if you spent a lot.

Of time in the Tate Gallery for that.

And then what is your favorite artist representation?

Good question. Well, I would say, you know, I like Turner and Constable, and it's difficult to say which I prefer. They're rather different. John Constable, I'll talk about first. He was one of. I think was one of our best. One of Britain's best cloud painters. And I just. I'm not too wild on the landscapes, part of his landscapes, but the sky is where it's all happening. He described the sky as the chief organ of sentiment, the key note in his paintings, and saw that as where all the kind of emotion that was the part of the painting that was charged for him. And he was a very, very keen weather watcher. He would write notes on the back of his paintings, on the back of his canvases of the conditions when he painted them. And for a period of time, he. In the 1820s, early 1820s, he just didn't bother with the ground any longer and just painted skies, these cloud studies. And they're beautiful. They're kind of very loose compared with his, you know, below the horizon line, or it feels a little bit, which is part of the kind of style then. But the sky feels very loose. Turner could be more difficult, different in a way. I mean, he's much more. Less to do with a really clear representation of exactly what the sky looked like. He was much more about the kind of emotion and the feeling of being consumed and in the middle of a storm and famously was, you know, tied himself to the mast of a ship when he was in the middle of a storm. He was like an early storm chaser in a way. So I love him just for the kind of the sheer sort of abstract energy of a cloud in the sky painting. So, yeah, I mean, I think they're both great cloud painters and I can't choose between the two. My favorite. Yeah. Ah. The British one and the US one are a little different. How did you. The. The insides are the same. It's just the COVID that's different. Yeah. The pig one's not in that one. Yeah, they just kind of get. They just sort of change. The UK one was done first and then the US one was done second. And I think they just found that one a more kind of dramatic. So they're essentially. They're essentially the same thing. They've just got different covers. And when the pig one didn't get put on this cover, it didn't go inside, who knows? But they're essentially. It's complicated, though. You know, nowadays, as you all know, things are. So there's no real distinction between territories in terms of what people find online. And so it's kind of confusing to have two names of the same book and people sort of is something that more and more. And it's also difficult when books get released in different territories at different times, because the Cloud Spotter's Guide, the first book, is in 15 territories now, or something like that, and a lot of different translations. Estonian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and each of these places, it comes out at a different time. And so the publisher wants, you know, for the press to be talking about it when the book's out, obviously not before anyone can buy it, but people, the journalists will find stuff online. They'll go to the Society website and they'll say, great, can I do an interview with you? And then it's this tricky sort of thing. And you kind of go, yeah, but it would be great if you could just wait for a bit. So that's just sort of the nature of, you know, the book industry around the world, you know, now that we've got this kind of breakdown of barriers. Yeah. First of all, thank you. It's wonderful that such thing exists. So I know you can see pretty amazing clouds almost anywhere, but what are some of your favorite geographic locations for amazing cloud spotting? Well, yeah, it's a good point. I mean, the first point I would make is that in a way, I sort of almost don't want to sort of say you should go here rather than there, because. Because that's kind of the point of it. I mean, like, somewhere like New York, all right, is not an ideal place to go. Cloud spotting, as you look up and you get sort of strips, you know what I mean, between the buildings. And yet the sky is one of the last wildernesses in a kind of urban environment. And for that reason, there's something great about being in a city and looking out, especially if you're at the top of a high building, then it's a great place to be cloud spotting. You look out and the sky is the last kind of wildness in this urban environment. So I don't think you have to be in an area of outstanding natural beauty to see an outstandingly beautiful sky and enjoy it and appreciate it. I would say there are kind of places where the sky is very Dramatic. There's a salt lake in Bolivia, the largest salt lake in the world. I believe it is up on a high plateau in Bolivia. And when it. When you get flash floods there, it gets covered in around about an inch or so of water. Being so shallow, this water can remain very, very still. And glass like. And it's like a mirror. So to be standing in the middle of this place, you. You see the sky above you and then the whole sky reflected below you as well. And so you really are like in a kind of. In a kingdom of clouds. The sort of thing you imagine when you're a kid. You know, if you go up there, what it would be like if I just jump out of the airplane and just bounce down on this kind of layer of strata, cumulus or whatever it might be. You know, it's a little bit like that. I haven't been there. That's somewhere I'd like to go. Normally it involves. Normally it involves just kind of being somewhere a little bit elevated, a bit of elevation, so that you don't have too much in your way. And then, of course, when you're out at sea and there's nothing to look at on the ground, the clouds are an absolute godsend. You know, sailors, that embroidered patch that we had there, we've done one for sailors, there's one for pilots and one for mountain climbers. But the sailors, one goes, well, but, you know, for people who could. That is their view, that. That's their countryside. That's the variety that they get to look at. So anywhere is the answer.

I think we run out of time, guys, but please help me thank Gavin one more time. Appreciate you coming out.

Thanks for having me.

And I believe he's.

Got.