New cloud type? It would be 1st since '51By Judy Keen, USA TODAY, June 15, 2009
It's an exciting time to have your head in the clouds.
Meteorologists are debating whether to seek formal recognition for the first new cloud variety since 1951, prompted in part by strange clouds photographed in 2006 by Jane Wiggins, a paralegal in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
She later posted the image she labeled "Armageddon" on the website of the Cloud Appreciation Society, an England-based group of more than 16,000 cloud enthusiasts created in 2005.
After several more photos of similar formations were posted on the site, society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney asked the Royal Meteorological Society in Reading, England, if they depict a previously unclassified cloud type.
Wiggins' photo is part of the evidence meteorologists there are weighing as they decide whether to ask the World Meteorological Organization to recognize the undulus asperatus, Latin for "turbulent undulation." . . .
~ Full story here
