We are pleased to announce that on January 21, 2010 ‘Kind of blurry’ became official member 20331 of The Cloud Appreciation Society.

The Cloud Appreciation Society is an organization based in the UK promoting an interest in clouds, and has over 20,000 members all over the world. Read more about it in this previous article.

The Cloud Appreciation Society’s Manifesto

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!

霞 【かすみ】 kasumi, (spring) mist [frequently translated as 'haze']

朝霞 【あさがすみ】 asagasumi, morning mist
夕霞 【ゆうがすみ】 yūgasumi, evening mist
遠霞 【とおがすみ】 tōgasumi, distant mist

This refers to being unable to see things in the distance because they are obscured by a somewhat cloudy atmosphere. This is not a meteorologist’s technical term, but indicates mist made up of fine droplets of water floating in the air. The phenomenon is common in autumn, with ‘fog’ (霧【きり】 kiri) being the established autumn kidai; ‘mist’ (霞【かすみ】 kasumi), is the term for spring. It seems that water vapor rising in warm air, making all of nature look blurred and calm, permeates things with the tranquillity of spring.
In addition to ‘morning mist’, ‘evening mist’, and ‘distant mist’, poets use such phrases as ‘the grass is misty’ (草霞む【くさかすむ】 kusa kasumu) and ‘the bell is mist-muffled’ (鐘霞む【かねかすむ】 kane kasumu). However, when the same phenomenon occurs at night, it is called ‘misty’ (朧【おぼろ】 oboro).

霧 【きり】 kiri, autumn mist / fog

狭霧 【さぎり】 sagiri, thin fog / thin autumn mist
霧襖 【きりふすま】 kirifusuma（きりぶすま）, wall of fog/mist [literally 'fog fusuma', sliding door of fog]

From Bashō:

kirishigure / fuji o minu hi zo / omoshiroki

in the misty rain
Mount Fuji is veiled all day —
how intriguing!

Nothing in nature has a hard outline, but everything is seen against something else, and its outlines fade gently into that something else, often so subtlely that you cannot quite distinguish where one ends and the other begins. In this mingled decision and indecision, this lost and found, lies all the charm and mistery of nature.

P.H. Emerson, The misty river, ca. 1890 / print ca. 1895 photogravure print, 15.0 x 19.6 cm.

Current satellite image of the Grand Banks
© Environment Canada / NOAA Polar Orbiting Sat imagery

The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland, Canada, with over 200 foggy days each year.

Fog is frequent here as the Grand Banks is the meeting place of the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. The cold Labrador Current runs over the Grand Banks, and when warm air passes over this water, a dense fog forms.

The fog, shallow waters and drifting icebergs make navigation difficult in this region. About 150 km south of the Grand Banks lies the shipwreck of the Titanic.

The foggiest land areas in the world are Point Reyes, California, and Argentia, Newfoundland and Labrador, both with around 200 foggy days a year.

Grand Banks / Map by Planiglobe

Fog in the Grand Banks / photo courtesy of M. Theberge, Maine Maritime Academy

Clouds found on the earth’s surface which obscure visibility to less than 1000 metres are called fog. Ground fog or low lying fog refers to fog located below eye level. Fog is formed when vapour-laden air cools down or when cool air and warm air mix together. The names given to sorts of fog in meteorology reveal the conditions under which a given sort is formed.

Radiation fog is formed by surface radiation during periods of clear weather as the ground temperature decreases after sundown. The cooler and heavier air flows down an incline towards ditches, where it combines with moister air and creates fog.

Radiation fog can form above snow around sundown when temperatures are very low. It can be very dense and reduce local visibility to less than 10 metres. When fog and wet roads begin to freeze, road conditions become slippery. Fog can also form above snow when the thaw sets in, as the warmer air flows over the cold snow. The fog is formed by the movement of warmer air, so that conditions are also often windy.

At sea, fog forms when cool air flows over relatively warm seawater or when warm air comes into contact with the cold sea. In the spring and early summer, warm air coming from Southern Europe can cause a mass of dense fog (a fog bank) to form above the cold North Sea. If the offshore wind is not strong enough, during the afternoon wind will blow the fog inland from the coast. This type of sea fog which suddenly moves in from the sea is called sea smoke.

Frontal fog forms when rain falls from warm air relatively high up in the atmosphere through cooler air on the ground. The rain is warmer as it falls through the cold air, causing fog to form. Rain can also cause saturation fog when the sun comes out after a storm and there is not much wind. In the bright sunlight we can see the vapour rise up off streets and roofs.

Visibility is measured with a device called a transmissometer: a lamp that projects a narrow beam of light on to a photoelectric cell detector. When it is foggy, the light will disperse among the water droplets so that less light is emitted to the photoelectric cell a short distance away. Less light means denser fog and more limited visibility. Transmissometers can be found at airports, among other places, where they are used to measure visibility on runways. On motorways, a specially adapted version of these visibility detectors is used to give fog alerts. Electrical warning signs alert motorists and display a new maximum speed limit.

Transmissometer at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI (photo Laura d'Ors)

by Gunther Können

When you know about them, you will notice them: cloud streets. They occur in coastal regions if the wind blows from sea. They consist of individual cumulus clouds, which are organized in parallel lines or streets. The distance between two streets is typical 1.5 km. On the Frisian island Terschelling, where I spend a few weeks any year, I usually spot such streets a few times during each stay. They occur there during south-western wind, that is when the wind direction is parallel with the island. Over Terschelling, about 4 km wide, there are usually three of these streets; between them the sky is clear. If you are unlucky enough, such a street keeps you many hours out of the sun. Over the sea there are no clouds at all.

If you recognize a cloud street, it is worth while to search for its starting point, which is of course stream up. This starting point displays a beautiful dynamics: continuously a new ‘first cloud’ is formed, which is then transported land inward by the wind. These ‘first clouds’ seem to emerge out of nothing. Downstream one can observe that the street dies out where it happens to arrive over sea.

A clouds street is formed in an unstable and moist air mass from the sea, in which the air temperature is lower than the seawater temperature. When it has arrived over land, it may pass a spot that has heated up by solar radiation to a higher temperature than the air. This forces the air to ascend, during which cloud formation occurs. Next to a cloud street the air is descending and the sky is clear; next to that region the air ascends again and a second street is formed. From satellites the streets resemble smoke plumes which are blown land inward by the wind. Near the west coast of the Netherlands there may appear a large number of parallel streets. They are completely stationary, as their position drifts, together with that of the hottest spot, slowly north or southward along the coast. This does not happen on an island like Terschelling, where the elongated shape and small width of the island firmly pins the position of the streets down.

‘If you are ignorant of something, you will fail to see it’ –see the first line of this article.

The existence of cloud streets is only ‘recognized’ for about 40 years, and this only happened when they showed up so clearly in images taken from weather satellites that they could not be overlooked any more. Every time when I look at the cloud streets, I am surprised that we, human beings, can be so blind for the obvious. I have no doubt that much more clear effects are hidden in Nature, just waiting for a first keen observer to be discovered!

Cloud street, photographed on 30 June 2008 on the Dutch island Terschelling by G.P. Können

Gunther Können is a retired physicist and former head of the climate
analysis division of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI.
Können is a keen observer of light phenomena and studies halos, rainbows,
atmospheric optics and climate. He took three times part in three-
month missions to study halos and atmospheric optics at the US South Pole
Station and the Russian Station Vostok in the inland of Antarctica.

On December 2, 2009 Minor Planet 12157 (an asteroid) received the name Können after him. Its diameter is about 6 km. Asteroid Können is at 2.4 AE from the sun and circles the sun in 3.75 year. Follow its orbit here

www.guntherkonnen.com

Günther Können, the first Dutchman at 90º00'00"S (photo courtesy of G. Können)

The mascletá as we know it today seems to have its origin in an act of movement: the mascletá correguda or ‘runned mascletá’. In the mascletá correguda, long strings with fireworks (the so-called traca) are disposed along the streets of a village or neighbourhood. The fireworks are lit at one extreme and explode all along the way, allowing people to run under the exploding fireworks or along with it, ‘accompanying the fire’.

As the route could be quite long, in order to avoid monotony in the explosions, pyrotechnicians invented a new concept: to create rythm within the explosions using respectively stronger or weaker fireworks at certains points. And so the search for aesthetic enjoyment within the explosions was born.

The beginning and/or the end of the mascletá usually took place at the church square of the village or neighbourhood. Because of the traditional urbanism of these villages, the mascletá was developed in this way: a narrow run through the streets and a final apotheosis at the squares, being those the only places which would allow an important amount of fireworks.

This tradition developed through the years and led to the modern mascletás we can enjoy today at Valencia’s city hall square. Nevertheless, some villages –as the municipality of Godella does every summer– still hold mascletás corregudas as they once were. This video courtesy of Freakpyromaniacs (8′51”) serves as an excellent example of this tradition: streets taken over by a cloud of smoke and rythmic explosions that culminate in a symphony of thunder.

The mascletá is a (mostly) daytime firework show consisting on rythmic sound explosions. It is based in the use of the so-called ‘masclet’ (a kind of powerful firecracker), whose explosion receives the name of ‘thunder’. The word’s etimology lies in the Valencian word for ‘male’. It is probably related to the loudness of the sound, what was considered masculine, and to the fact that these fireworks explosions were dedicated exclusively to holy men; whereas celebrations for holy women had a lighter, more feminine character. The origin of the mascletá lies probably in the purifying character of black powder, to scare evil spirits. Today, mascletás are common in weddings and other celebrations.

The mascletá is a very austere show, it has no colours or shapes to decorate, it is based on the beauty of the pure explosion. It normally lasts for 5 to 10 minutes and follows a strict order. In this sense, we can consider them authentic symphonies of noise.

Schedule of a mascletá, as proposed on the book 'Pirotecnia en Valencia' of Ferriols, Pagola and Solá

For the mascletá, the masclets are connected by a thread structure at about 2,5 meters height. The mascletá seeks rythm and growing intensity, combining ground and air explosions, and has its summit with a deafening ground explosion called ‘earthquake’ and an explosion in the air called ‘bombardment’. The mascletá ends with the ’signature’.

Mascletá at the city hall square of Valencia, March 13, 2009 (photo Laura d'Ors)

In March, during the Fallas celebrations of Valencia, the public can enjoy big mascletás in the city hall square. These overwhelming mascletás are held daily at 14.00h by a different pyrotechnic and increase their intensity as days pass by. This video courtesy of Freakpyromaniacs (7′31”) shows the mascletá by well-known pyrotechnist Ricardo Caballer that took place on March 19, St Joseph’s Day, last day of the Fallas 2009. Because of its filming angle, it allows to see very well all phases of the mascletá. Definitely worth watching till the end, to understand the magnitude of this traditional celebration and share the mascletá’s intense emotion that lets visitors speechless, and often highly addicted.

The Blur building was built by New York-based architects Diller and Scofidio on Lake Neuchâtel at Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland on occasion of the Swiss Expo 2002. The Blur building uses various forms of water –mist, dew, fog and drinking water– as the substance of its architecture. Water is pumped from the lake, filtered and shot as mist.

The public can approach Blur via a bridge. Visual and acoustical references are erased along the journey. Prior to entering the cloud, each visitor responds to a questionnaire and receives a ’smart raincoat’. The coat is used as protection from the wet environment and storage of the personality data for communication with the cloud’s computer network. Using tracking and location technologies, each visitor’s position can be identified and their character profiles compared to any other visitor.

Diller and Scofidio define Blur as ‘decidedly low-definition’. Inside Blur there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself. ‘The building is formless, featureless, depthless, scaless, massless, surfaceless and dimensionless. Movement within is unregulated’.

During the final ascent the public walks through the cloud towards the open sky. There, visitors enjoy the view, and can choose from a large selection of commercial waters, municipal waters from world capitals, and glacial waters. Visitors can drink the building, too.

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)