Okanagan’s Nature Nut – a nature blog by Roseanne Van Ee – November 13th, 2025
Cloud Watching
Ever since working at the Allan Brooks Nature Centre long ago, I’ve been slowly learning about clouds. That knoll offers the most remarkable cloud watching opportunities I’ve ever seen. The site is really tantamount to weather experiencing opportunities. You can hear the rolling of a summer thunderstorm in one darkened, cloud-filled valley and turn to see the sun streaming down another clear valley. You can watch storms and cloud masses move around the whole Okanagan; in fact often all around the centre, but sometimes not over it. This is the “donut” phenomenon where the sun keeps on shining at the centre. Other days you could almost be blown off the knoll. You can close your eyes while standing there and feel the still air change to a breeze and back again in minutes while experiencing the air masses move by.
As a child, my brothers and I found funny, familiar animal shapes in clouds, usually giraffes, elephants and the like. I even distinctly saw an enormous bat shape once. I’ve matured now; I want to understand clouds. I want to know the processes that produce them. Clouds aren’t fluffy, solid masses. They’re masses of dense water vapour molecules in the sky seen from a distance. On land we see them as fog. They’re condensation where warm and cold air meet. But to really know clouds, you need to understand weather. Understanding weather means appreciating the dynamics of air movement (AKA air pressure) and temperature. Ask any pilot; they know this well. Cloud watching opens a whole new window to nature appreciation.
November’s a funny month for outdoor adventures. You have to move fast outside or stay cozy inside. The weather’s unreliable from day to day; it can always get cold and rainy or dump slushy snow. That’s what makes it a good time to study clouds. They’re full of rain or snow, or just passing overhead and you can appreciate their dynamic nature through a window. Sunrises and sunsets can get quite bold now, too, if not fogged in. Evening light accents clouds pink and gold as the sunset begins, then melds into an orange lustre as the sun sets.
Even on gloomy, gray days the clouds can be dynamic. Air pressure forms the clouds, sometimes into dark, heavy snow or rain-laden puffs. The air temperature will dictate whether these clouds decompose as rain or snow. Air masses push the clouds along. Nights that are capped with clouds keep us warm, like a giant cover. Classifying objects (or organisms) helps us to simplify what we see. I’m so glad Luke Howard, an English pharmacist/naturalist, developed a system to classify clouds in 1803. He noticed that all clouds belong to one of three basic groups. You’ve probably heard their names: Cumulus which means “heap” or “pile” in Latin, Cirrus meaning “curl” in Latin and Stratus which means “stretched out”. But, Howard realized that the three categories only described the primary clouds, so he combined the names with others relating them to their levels in the atmosphere to create 10 cloud classifications. These have names such as: Cirrostratus, Cumulonimbus, Altocumulus and more. This is where the study begins!
I used to think November was a gloomy month. I wished the sun-kissed, wildly coloured warm Octobers would linger till snow covered the mountains. This November, I’m going to curl up with weather books starting off with Exploring the Sky By Day, by Terence Dickinson to rereading a marvellous book called Heaven’s Breath; A Natural History of the Wind, by Lyall Watson. There’s only one catch; Heaven’s Breath is now unavailable, so I need to find someone who can lend me a copy.
Happy cloud watching everyone!
