Cloud Appreciation Society

Undulatas Asperatus hovers over what looks like a Kansas town

 I’m not a big joiner, but I just found out about a group that should have me as a member. It’s called the Cloud Appreciation Society.  

As a teenager, I had serious intentions to move to Portland or Seattle, because of the cloud cover.  I ended up in Miami, and it was my longing for the nimbus and cirrus that inspired Roger to compose his jazz reverie, "Clouds for Mone".  I have been a true cloud appreciator for years, and as such, feel I should be granted honorary status to the Cloud Appreciation Society retroactively, to the time of the group's inception. But I'm told I have to cough up their snooty membership fee if I want the badge and certificate. Nine bucks! So elitist.            

CAS was born out of a joke. A writer who was slated to speak about clouds at a literary festival in 2004 titled his talk, “The Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society”, just to drive up attendance.  Afterwards people asked to  join the society, and so the fake group became a real thing.

Today the group has 32,000 members, and they are quite active. One member, a 34-year old musician from Spain, organized a three-day event, “The First International Congress for the Observation of Clouds,” last October.  They went on cloud-spotting walks and had scientists lecturing about clouds.  Sounds like head-in-the-clouds heaven to me. 

 They are on a campaign to get a new cloud  recognized and added to the International Cloud Atlas, which is the official registry of clouds.  The Atlas has been published since 1896, and hasn’t added a new cloud for more than 50 years.

The new cloud the sky-heads want to add is called Undulatas Asperatus . That is Latin for “roughened wave.” They describe the cloud as looking like you’re underneath turbulent sea water.