Fun (and Probably Unpronouncable) Word of the Day: “Undulatus Asperatus”

Last updated on: March 17, 2017 at 2:57 pm by Joseph Susanka

Fun (and Probably Unpronouncable) Word of the Day: “Undulatus Asperatus” 2017-03-17T14:57:06-06:00 Joseph Susanka

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OK, yes. That’s two fun and probably unpronounceable words. So sue me.

Here, from no less (or is that “no greater?”) an authority than Wikipedia:

Undulatus asperatus is a cloud formation, proposed in 2009 as a separate cloud classification by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. If successful it will be the first cloud formation added since cirrus intortus in 1951 to the International Cloud Atlas of the World Meteorological Organization. The name translates approximately as “roughened or agitated waves”.

Riiiiiiight. I have …pretty much no idea what that means. I need to see things like “agitated waves” before I understand what those particular words mean in that particular (and particularly unusual) combination.

So, here:

Wow. (HT to ThisIsColossal and Slate’s Phil Plait.)

Also, yes. I’m burying the lede a bit. Lemme fix that. …ahem:

There is a Cloud Appreciation Society!

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry,
and the most egalitarian of her displays, since
everyone can have a fantastic 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 can be read like those of
a person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save
on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

An Asperatus formation over Etterbeek, Brussels.
© Mark Lindsay-White (via the Cloud Appreciation Society website)

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