A Cloudy Day in Des Moines (Interesting!)

[3113]

No, not our own Cloudy...this is about weather...

DES MOINES, Iowa – Looking out the 11th floor window of her law office, Jane Wiggins did a double take and grabbed her camera. The dark, undulating clouds hovering outside were unlike anything she'd seen before. "It looked like Armageddon," said Wiggins, a paralegal and amateur photographer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "The shadows of the clouds, the lights and the darks, and the greenish-yellow backdrop. They seemed to change." They dissipated within 15 minutes, but the photo Wiggins captured in June 2006 intrigued — and stumped — a group of dedicated weather watchers who now are pushing weather authorities to create a new cloud category, something that hasn't been done since 1951. Breaking into the cloud family would require surviving layers of skeptical international review. Still, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and his England-based Cloud Appreciation Society are determined to establish a new variety. They've given Wiggins' photo and similar pictures taken in different parts of the world to experts in England, and are discussing the subject fervently online.

...There are three main groups of clouds: cumulous, cirrus and stratus. Each has various sub-classifications built on other details of the formation. Brant Foote, a longtime scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the clouds photographed by Wiggins already fit into the existing cumulous classification. But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification. He proposes they be called altocumulus undulatus asperatus. The last word — Latin for roughen or agitate — is a reference to the clouds' undulating surface.

More here. And here is the picture:

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk24/slayer_138/capt_408bf4e4288844dea6eafec51251fd.jpg

Looks cloudy to me.

 

[Tarakin]

Interesting! But the term 'altocumulus undulatus asperatus' sounds a bit odd. Why not call them after the one who detected them? This would be great if it would have been a Litizen! Imagine:

Cumulus 3113 cloud or Cumulus JamesBJohnson cloud.

This method could get odd though results, though:

Salvor Hardon cloud... Rumple Foreskin cloud... Cloudy cloud...

 

[sr71plt]

So, let's get this straight. You're suggesting there actually is a place called Des Moines? It isn't just a Correct Coast and Left Coast running joke? I n t e r e s t i n g.

 

[freshface]

So, let's get this straight. You're suggesting there actually is a place called Des Moines? It isn't just a Correct Coast and Left Coast running joke? I n t e r e s t i n g.

See? That's what happens when you spend too much time outside the country. You start forgetting which bits are inside it.

 

[sr71plt]

Yep, a long way from home--which is an isolated valley in Colorado reached from Wyoming.

 

[_Lynn_]

So, let's get this straight. You're suggesting there actually is a place called Des Moines? It isn't just a Correct Coast and Left Coast running joke? I n t e r e s t i n g.

Imagine that, eh.
Some of us have even been there.
Or have family near there.
Or were born not far from there.
Hard to comprehend isn't it?

 

[3113]

So, let's get this straight. You're suggesting there actually is a place called Des Moines? It isn't just a Correct Coast and Left Coast running joke? I n t e r e s t i n g.

And I'm suggesting that it's gotten weird clouds AND that it's been (glancing both way) photographed!

 

[Handley_Page]

No, not our own Cloudy...this is about weather...

More here. And here is the picture:

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk24/slayer_138/capt_408bf4e4288844dea6eafec51251fd.jpg

Looks cloudy to me.

that looked like something out of CGI in a movie.
but she was looking at it from higher than usual,

 

[sr71plt]

And I'm suggesting that it's gotten weird clouds AND that it's been (glancing both way) photographed!

Guess you can't take a little funning, right? (I thought the subsequent "ties to a valley you can only get to from Wyoming" would somehow signal the irony.)

 

[3113]

Guess you can't take a little funning, right? (I thought the subsequent "ties to a valley you can only get to from Wyoming" would somehow signal the irony.)

I was funnin' back. Honest. Don't know about anyone else, but for all that it has a place called Des Moines, I still respect Iowa. They legalized gay marriage (and watch if someone doesn't blame the weird clouds on that! )

 

[sr71plt]

Some of my best friends are Iowans (Iowese?). Honest. (And some few of these actually live there.)

 

[champagne1982]

Looks like the skies here at least twice a year...

 

[Liar]

I am the gatekeeper.

 

[champagne1982]

I am the gatekeeper.

Don't make me get all Sigourney Weaver on your ass...
http://www.vince-vaughn.com/Zuul.jpg

 

[The_Fool]

Don't make me get all Sigourney Weaver on your ass...
http://www.vince-vaughn.com/Zuul.jpg

You can get all SW on me if you get nekkid....

 

[TE999]

That's a totally awesome picture. Weather is incredibly cool. It makes you feel powerless and insignificant, which compared to it's wrath, you are. No wonder the ancient civilizations ascribed it to the workings of a god and in some cases worshipped it.

 

[SweetWitch]

You can get all SW on me if you get nekkid....

Hey. I thought I was SW.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Originally Posted by The_Fool
You can get all SW on me if you get nekkid....

Hey. I thought I was SW.

If you get nekkid, you too can be anybody you want to be.

 

[SweetWitch]

If you get nekkid, you too can be anybody you want to be.

Incorrigible.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
If you get nekkid, you too can be anybody you want to be.

Incorrigible.

And proud of it.