Skywatch Friday: Cumulus humilis

Cumulus humilis (Cu hum)

Last Friday, I said I was going to learn about cloudspotting (that's what they call the process of identifying clouds). By Monday, I decided to quit. It's hard! There are no people, like at iNaturalist or Bugguide, to confirm your photo IDs and give advice.

However, Lucy and I were sitting out late Wednesday afternoon and lovely clouds were slowly moving overhead. I decided to try time-lapse on my iPhone; and I loved the result!

I sent the video to Adobe Creative Cloud, which is free. (I think it is free. I have not seen any subscription charges at my bank. Sometimes these subscriptions seem to slither into my life without me knowing.) 

I signed into Adobe and then created a new project by clicking the big purply-blue + button at the top left. Then I chose "Convert to GIF" under the video choices. I uploaded my video, chose "medium" size (the default size), and landscape (because the video was landscape), downloaded it, and here we have it! By the way, I have made one other GIF of Lucy and Nell and it was simply awful because I chose large. It is my shame on Twitter. 

After that success, I had the patience to try to identify the clouds. They are Cumulus humilis. I think. They match the description and the photos that I have linked here.

I'm now motivated to try again for next week. Learning happens in frustrating fits and starts. It's a good lesson for me to remember when my own students return to school late this month.

During my research for this, I learned that you can join the community science project Cloudspotting on Mars and identify Martian clouds from photos from the rovers. 

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