Friday 30th October 2026 William Turner painted around 550 oil paintings and over 2,000 watercolours in his lifetime, including many skyscapes and seascapes. As his style evolved, his work became increasingly expressionistic and abstract. Sea and Sky is a swash of meteorological chaos that defies cloudspotter classification. Maybe Turner was demonstrating that the clouds and the water are both shaped by waves and currents. Or maybe he was trying to show that, for sailors trapped in a storm, it can be difficult to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Sea and Sky (c. 1820-1830) by Joseph Mallord William Turner is in the collection of Tate Britain, London, England. The post Friday 30th October 2026 appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/friday-30th-october-2026/ #october #williamturner #sky #sea #tatebritain #mallordwilliam #josephmallord #maybeturner #england #london #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Colder and Snowier than Normal in the Northwest: This is NOT the El Nino Pattern The Northwest atmosphere did not get the message about El Nino this week, with colder-than-normal temperatures and substantial snowfall in the mountains. For example, a veritable army of snowplows moved through Snoqualmie Pass this morning See the video here. Stevens Pass was quite snowy this afternoon The visible satellite image this morning was a classic, showing instability showers offshore, the result of cold Arctic air passing over much warmer water. The radiosonde sounding (balloon-launched weather instruments) at Forks indicated a freezing level of around 1300 meters above sea level (around 4200 ft). The snow level can be as much as 1000 ft below that. No wonder the passes got snow. With the cold/snow conditions over the region, several mountain locations have had above-normal snow amounts the last few days (see below). The blue dots indicate stations with over 150% of normal snow!. That does say much this early in the season. The colder-than-normal conditions, with more mountain snow, are not over! The forecast of the temperature anomaly from normal shows for the next day indicates that the whole Northwest will be colder than normal (blue and green colors). And colder-than-normal conditions will continue over the region for the next week! The result will be additional early-season mountain snow, as shown by the predicted accumulation through Sunday afternoon (below). There has been a lot of loose talk about coastal Kelvin waves and warm ocean conditions off our coast, but our water temperatures are actually quite close to normal (see below). The warmer-than-normal coastal waters are mainly to our south over central and southern California and offshore far to our southwest. Finally, the models are emphatic that there will be a major weather regime change in a week, when a series of potent atmospheric rivers will aim directly at our region (see below). Should really help to fill reservoirs. Quite a contrast to classic El Niños that take the moisture plumes into California. All in all, good news for water resources in the Northwest. https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2026/10/colder-and-snowier-than-normal-in.html #ninopattern #northwest #normal #snoqualmiepass #see #california #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Thursday 29th October 2026 The Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire, England was covered in a veil of low cloud as Benjamin Rule (Member 13,176) looked out one morning. This is radiation fog, which tends to develop overnight as the land loses heat by radiating it into the clear night sky. When the air near the ground is moist, the night is long, and there’s a very gentle breeze, the cold ground can cool the air just above it enough for moisture to condense. Diffuse cloud way above, in the form of Cirrostratus, appears to be arriving on the horizon, suggesting that the clear night might be followed by an overcast day. The post Thursday 29th October 2026 appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/thursday-29th-october-2026/ #october #benjaminrule #whitehorse #member #oxfordshire #vale #cirrostratus #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Polar Vortex Split Forecast: The Earliest Stratospheric Warming on Record Is Coming The Polar Vortex is heading toward a record early disruption. The latest forecasts show stratospheric winds collapsing toward a full reversal in early November, splitting ... Read more The post Polar Vortex Split Forecast: The Earliest Stratospheric Warming on Record Is Coming by author Andrej Flis appeared first on Severe Weather Europe. https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/polar-vortex-split-record-early-stratospheric-warming-event-november-2026-united-states-canada-europe-fa/ #polarvortex #record #november #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Head in the Clouds: The Art of Cloud Appreciation After writing about his love of clouds in Chronogram, a local culture website for the Hudson Valley, Brian K. Mahoney received a thoughtful gift from cloud enthusiasts John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler: a membership to the Cloud Appreciation Society. Inspired by that gesture, Brian set out to learn more about the cloudspotting community and discovered the simple joy of looking up. In this warm and personal article, he reflects on the beauty of clouds and the connections they can inspire. Read the full story here Image credit: A fish, (made), out of water over the Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Valley, New York, US. © John Bigelow Taylor The post Head in the Clouds: The Art of Cloud Appreciation appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/head-in-the-clouds-the-art-of-cloud-appreciation/ #cloudappreciation #appreciationsociety #art #diannedubler #hudsonvalley #bigelowtaylor #johnbigelow #brian #chronogram #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Wednesday 28th October 2026 CloudSpotter app user ‘eight skies’ spotted ice-crystal strands of Cirrus fibratus stretching out over clumps of Cumulus humilis above Knox, Victoria, Australia. The highs and lows, the ups and downs, the rough and the smooth… It’s all on display. Spotted by 'eight skies' (Member ). The post Wednesday 28th October 2026 appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/wednesday-28th-october-2026/ #october #australia #victoria #knox #member #spotted #cirrus #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

From Elena Murer Elena Murer is an artist from Pisa, Italy whose paintings reflect nature as she has experienced them through her life. These are a few of her oil on canvas works depicting the sky. See more of Elena’s work on her website The post From Elena Murer appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/from-elena-murer/ #elenamurer #pisa #see #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Stratosphere Plummets over Seattle....and Huge Precipitation Contrasts Today, the stratosphere was much, much closer to you than normal, and we all lived to tell the tale. As many of you know, the lowest layer of the atmosphere is the troposphere, where nearly all the weather occurs (see below). Temperature generally decreases with height in the troposphere (red line) Above the troposphere, there is the stratosphere, where the temperature increases with height...first slowly, then rapidly. Temperatures are warm near the surface due to the heating of the surface by the Sun, while aloft the heating is due to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation by the ozone layer. Over our region, the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere (the tropopause) is typically around 35,000 ft... just a little above the typical cruising altitude of jet aircraft. You can often see the boundary from your aircraft window. Clouds and haze in the troposphere, clear air and blue skies in the stratosphere (see below) Something dramatic happened this morning to the boundary between the two layers (again, the tropopause). It plummeted from roughly 35,000 ft to around 23,000 ft. If you were flying above western Washington this morning at typical cruise altitude, you were deep into the stratosphere, with lots of ozone being ingested into the aircraft. How do I know the stratosphere was that low? Because there was an ascent of a National Weather Service radiosonde (balloon-lifted weather instrument) that showed the situation clearly. Here is the plot, with red being temperature and blue dew point. Temperature stopped cooling, and air became very dry (indicated by the dew point declining rapidly) around 400 hPa pressure, which is found around 23,000 ft. Weather forecast models create a map of the height of the tropopause, and one was shown before 5 AM this morning. It is very high over the warm tropics and lower near the poles. But there are also complex distortions in the height of the stratosphere over the midlatitudes and polar regions, and one such structure was over our coast, with the blue color indicating a downward distortion of the tropopause. Weather balloon went right into this. This local distortion of the tropopause was due to a well-defined upper-level trough this morning, indicated by the blue colors and the low "L" in the figure below How unusual was the descent of the stratosphere to 23,000 ft this morning? I checked the radioaodne data for the last 50 years. It was the tenth-lowest excursion in October on record. Impressive. Finally, since I am talking about impressive things, how about the total precipitation around the Olympics over the past 48 hours (below)? Nearly five inches on the southwest side and 0.17 inches on the northern flank near Port Angeles. We are talking about a factor of over 25 times! Why did this occur? With the low offshore, strong moist winds approached the Olympics from the southwest and were forced to rise, releasing a large amount of moisture as rain. On the northern side, the air sank, was warmed by compression, and the relative humidity dropped, killing any precipitation. You got to love living here... 👴 https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-stratosphere-plummets-over.html #weather #temperature #above #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Tuesday 27th October 2026 The sailors of yore were onto something when they proclaimed that a red sky in the morning foretold bad weather. There is a scientific basis for the proverb, at least in temperate regions like Angola on the Lake, New York, US, where Laurel Harvey (Member 67,249) saw these Altocumulus stratiformis clouds painted crimson by the light of the rising Sun. A red sunrise like this happens when clouds overhead are illuminated by a rising Sun that’s unobscured by clouds on the eastern horizon. Temperate regions tend to experience weather fronts passing over from west to east. This produces a repeating pattern of lower-pressure, unsettled weather interspersed with higher-pressure, settled weather. This is why red-lit clouds overhead at sunrise with clear skies to the east suggest that relatively settled conditions are moving away, while the next weather system approaches from the west. That said, a weather front doesn’t necessarily mean a storm. The one that arrived after Laurel’s red sky in the morning brought nothing fiercer than a moderate breeze and a touch of light rain. The post Tuesday 27th October 2026 appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/tuesday-27th-october-2026/ #october #newyork #laurelharvey #sun #member #angola #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Monday 26th October 2026 While playing in the backyard with her grandchildren in Plano, Texas, US, Jan Bolinger (Member 65,050) spotted a combination of optical phenomena. The circular ring of light around the Sun is a 22-degree halo, and the bright upper part extending into an oval around it is a circumscribed halo. The faint patch of light at the edge of the frame on the right is a sun dog. And if you look very closely, you might be able to spot an even fainter parhelic circle, a band of white light that appears to be passing from the sun dog, through the halo, and to the Sun. All of these atmospheric optical effects formed as a result of sunlight refracting through and reflecting off the hexagonal, prism-like ice crystals in that thin layer of Cirrostratus nebulosus cloud. Clever Cirrostratus! The post Monday 26th October 2026 appeared first on Cloud Appreciation Society. https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/monday-26th-october-2026/ #october #janbolinger #sun #cirrostratus #member #texas #plano #clevercirrostratus #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit