Extraordinary Clouds

by Richard Hamblyn

You? ll find a selection of some of the most startling and unusual cloud formations, from uniform streaks of ? cloud streets? to the odd bulbous ? lenticularis? that are commonly mistaken for UFOs. Each amazing photograph will be accompanied by Hamblyn? s entertaining and informative explanation of how the cloud was formed and the conditions in which a similar one might occur. The images chosen use satellite photography as well as ground-based pictures and the collection demonstrates the most unexpected and seemingly impossible patterns that can be created by the natural cycles of weather.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Photography

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

About the author

Richard Hamblyn studied at the universities of Essex and Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on 18th-century topographical writing. His first book, The Invention of Clouds (2001) told the story of Luke Howard, the amateur meteorologist who named the clouds in 1802; his other publications include The Cloud Book (2008) and Extraordinary Clouds (2009), both published in association with the (UK) Met Office; Data Soliloquies (2009), co-written with the digital artist Martin John Callanan; and Terra: Tales of the Earth, a collection of stories about major natural disasters. His anthology, The Art of Science: A Natural History of Ideas, was published by Picador in October 2011. It is a wide-ranging collection of readable science writing from the Babylonians to the Higgs boson.

Reviews

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful photos. Difficult and obscure descriptions. This is not a book to learn about clouds. Still the pictures are so cool that not getting much from the text doesn't keep the book from being at least somewhat entertaining.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scrapes a three. On a lot of the pictures the writing was too technical for the average reader. Also I feel the book didn’t do the photos justice. They were too small or across a page join.

[Kelly Whitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It needs to be bigger sized not only for the pictures but because the text was also small and hard to read. The pics should have been a little brighter too. I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the flying saucers cloud book but it was still interesting.

[Pepquímic]

Spectacular photos of clouds with surprising shapes, colors and sizes. All of them with the corresponding description.

[Thom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic picture book; accompanying text describes well the phenomena.

[Grim-Anal King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very pleasant.