Sky Awareness Week Is Here (H. Michael Mogil, CCM, CBM, NWA-DS*)
Spring arrived about one month ago (Mar. 20, 2018). At that time, many people were looking forward to escaping winter’s icy fingers. Alas, for many in the eastern two-thirds of the country, Old Man Winter did not get the memo.
My wife, Barbara, and I were looking forward to South Florida’s cumulus cloud season and the more exciting spring and summer skies. No, we were not wishing for tornadoes and severe storms (much like those that struck the Deep South several times during the past month), but these will come along with the normal seasonal transition. Nor were we anticipating an angry fire weather season with massive fires across parts of the southern Plains and the southwest. Even southwest Florida had to deal with several significant wild fires and the associated smoke and ash clouds. As Matt Bolton, my ex-intern and now professional colleague, noted some years ago — “iiWii” (It Is What It Is).
Much like the United Kingdom’s CLOUD APPRECIATION SOCIETY, Jack Borden’s FOR SPACIOUS SKIES effort, and Weatherwise Magazine’s annual Photography Issue, HOW THE WEATHERWORKS is a strong proponent for “sky awareness” and “sky understanding.” People around the globe often look up at the sky and awe at its splendor, its usual and unusual scenes, its colors, and its optical phenomena (e.g., rainbows). Storm spotters are forever capturing sky scenes as they hopefully hunt for photogenic tornadic storms. Artists have painted sky scenes forever, while kids often draw the sky, replete with a huge yellow sun (and sun rays) in an upper corner of their artwork.
Against this backdrop, HOW THE WEATHERWORKS and its principal, H. Michael Mogil (that’s me), petitioned the U.S. Postal Service to issue cloud stamps. It took 15 years for the realization, but a sheet of 15 actual photographic cloud images (Fig. 1) arrived in the fall of 2004 at a ceremony at the Blue Hill Observatory near Boston, MA.
Most recently, I discovered Susan Forrest Castle in a local newspaper story about her then recently published cloud book showcasing the Naples sky – CLOUDS OF OLD NAPLES. Her focus was on downtown Naples, where the land, water and sky interface somewhat magically.
Back in the late 1980’s, we pushed for state proclamations for Sky Awareness Week (SAW). Our efforts netted 42 of these proclamations and we have capitalized on these to continue to showcase National Sky Awareness Week. After all, SAW is all about watching, appreciating and understanding the sky (meteorological and astronomical) that is above us.
This year (SAW is April 22-28 and is chronicled yet again in Chase’s Calendar of Annual Events), we will again be sharing information about SAW to TV weather broadcasters and meteorologists nationwide, teachers, weather campers, and others, asking them to “retweet” information to others. We’ll also be working with local southwest Florida governmental leaders to begin a push for county and city Sky Awareness Week proclamations in 2019 and possibly beach signage displaying and explaining various facets of the natural beauty southwest Florida has to offer.
Finally, we are beginning efforts to update our SAW Facebook page and encourage people globally to add sky imagery to the gallery. Should we use any submitted images in SAW articles or other activities, we’ll provide appropriate credit (if creditable information was provided to us); otherwise, we’ll indicate the image was supplied by “anonymous.”
And, while there is a week to formally observe the sky, one should always be looking up to see what the skies provide. More than six weeks ago, two of our MATHWORKS TUTORING CENTER students noticed crepuscular rays gracing the southwest sky just before sunset. I wrote about their observations and shared the crepuscular ray images in the article linked here.
About two weeks ago, also in southwest Florida, I saw a stretch vortex atop a wind-blown cumulus cloud; then a week ago, I eyed a low-level Kelvin-Helmholz wave train (which vanished in minutes).
So, please have a good time this week (and this year) looking up and seeing what the sky has to offer. And come back to my Lifelong Learning Blog throughout this week to catch the SAW stories that I’ll be posting.
© 2018 H. Michael Mogil
Originally posted 4/22/18
* The National Weather Association Digital Seal (NWA-DS) is awarded to individuals who pass stringent meteorological testing and evaluation of written weather content. H. Michael Mogil was awarded the second such seal and is a strong advocate for its use by weather bloggers.