In 1803, a shy British pharmacist wrote a pamphlet that made him a reluctant celebrity. The reason? He proposed a revolutionary new system for classifying clouds — with Latin names we still use today, like cumulus, cirrus, and stratus. Also: when...
In the early 19th Century, a shy British chemist named Luke Howard self-published a pamphlet called Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, which proposed a taxonomy of cloud formations. To his surprise, the pamphlet captured the public imagination...
Luke Howard’s Essay on the Modifications of Clouds gave English writers and artists a new Latin vocabulary for classifying clouds, and its influence reached John Constable and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley’s poem The Cloud turns a cloud into an “I”...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game for those who appreciate the study of things like comparatively thick cuts of beef or people who go to shake your hand only to pull theirs away and smooth down their hair. This is part of a complete episode...
snizzle n.— «I remember when Gary coined the word “snizzle”…There just wasn’t a way to describe the stuff that’s not quite snow but not quite drizzle.» —“Former Tulsa meteorologist passes away” KJRH...
omega block n.— «Northern California has been sitting under what meteorologists commonly refer to as an “omega” block—so named because of its distinctive shape—which features troughs of low pressure both to the west and east of a large...