LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With Lake County's famous clean air, as certified by the State's Air Resource Board, and our location, location, location nestled between the coast and Central Valley, it's rare for us to see coastal or valley fog.

However, if you are lucky, you may experience the dramatic “bridal fog” which spills over the top of Mount St. Helena from time to time.

Situated in all of this clean air, we do, however, get to observe a wide variety of cloud formations.

Observing clouds can become habit-forming, and is an enjoyable form of weather-watching.

Within each layer of our atmosphere you can often “read” what is going on above you.

Think of clouds as aerial weather labs, as translating the clouds is frequently used to predict weather.

Meteorologists watch altostratus clouds in the middle-altitude for one form of weather, the higher cirrus clouds for another, and in the lower levels of the altitude they may watch cumulus clouds.

Although people have been watching clouds since ancient times, clouds weren't classified scientifically until the 1800s when the French naturalist Chevalier de Lamarck wrote up a cloud-types publication, and simultaneously Englishman, Luke Howard, who was a chemist, wrote an essay on clouds for a literary club called, “On the Modification of Clouds.”

Today forecasters separate Luke Howard's cloud categories into two main groups: clouds that are “heaped” which cause unstable air currents, and clouds that are “layered.” Layered clouds originate in stable air.

If you have a desire to become a connoisseur of clouds, you may delight in the sheer variety that can be distinguished from the fluffy-looking white stuff.

In the lexicon of clouds you can delight in cloud varieties, species and even what Audubon's “Field Guide to Weather” calls “accessory clouds.”

Then you can toss around cloud lingo such as, fibratus (clouds which appear almost straight or have curved filaments like cirrus clouds), nebulous (clouds without pronounced features), fractus (those clouds that appear shredded) or opacus ( a sheet of cloud that may hide the moon or even the sun). There are dozens of delightful words to depict clouds!

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? – it is the same the angels breathe.” – Mark Twain, from “Roughing It.”
    
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.