I’ve been really fascinated by the Colorado sky this summer.  It is so big and expansive that you can see so much variety.  From where we live we can watch the clouds congregate on the mountains and make their way toward the plains, and in the evening light they are quite a site to behold.  There are so many times I’m driving around on errands wishing I had my camera to document the towering layers, but I never have it.  I can stand on my back porch, though.  Here are some of the heavenly sites from right outside my window.

These high clouds are altocumulus.  There are 3 basic types of clouds.  Cirrus clouds are high and wispy, cumulus clouds are the mid sky cotton balls, and stratus clouds cover the sky low and like a blanket.  It gets a bit complicated for me from there because from those 3 divisions they’re categorized into 10 basic kinds of clouds because most clouds are some kind of combination of the 3 basics.

These are cumulostratus– kind of cottony, kind of blankety.

Our very favorite library book on clouds has been Tomie dePaola’s Cloud Book.  You just can’t help but love Tomie’s illustrations and humor along with real, sound information.  The Man who Named the Clouds is about Luke Howard, the man who first devised the way to categorize and name clouds.  It starts with his childhood and shows how following your passion and studying hard can really affect the world.  I also need to get myself my own copy of The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn.  It’s a nature guide for naming clouds full of lovely photos and explanations of why clouds are called what they are.

Have you been looking up lately?