When is the last time you stretched out on your back under a sky full of clouds?
Your mind literally cannot help but make sense of the seemingly random balloonings or smears or pulled threads of clouds. It is what minds do—create order from patterns that our eye and mind can’t help but look for.
Seeing shapes in billowing clouds or ceiling tiles was once thought to be a kind of madness.
But on looking again at pareidolia, it just may have something to teach us about creativity.
See faces in the clouds? It might be a sign of your creativity
I was reminded of this a few days back (before the near-strike of lightning at the house) when we saw a series of towering “cumulonimbus incus” clouds commonly known as Anvil Clouds of anvil-tops—a name derived from the flattened upper reaches where the air has hit the “cap” of the atmosphere and goes OUT instead of UP.
In the coming weeks, I will try to post some cloud pix, and you can import them and show us the things you see. We can compare notes, and see which one of us is the craziest. I did this to a cloud shot in the first year of blogging (2002) and titled it “The Hand of God reaches down and touches the face of….a poodle.” Guess you had to be there.
About anvil clouds so you can be alert that these things can cause mischief:
A cumulonimbus incus is a mature thunderstorm cloud generating many dangerous elements.
- Lightning; this storm cloud is capable of producing bursts of cloud to ground lightning.
- Hail; hailstones may fall from this cloud if it’s a highly unstable environment (which favors a more vigorous storm updraft).
- Heavy rain; this cloud may drop several inches of rain in a short amount of time. This can cause flash flooding.
- Strong wind; gale-force winds from a downburst may occur under this cloud.
- Tornadoes; in severe cases (most commonly with supercells), it can produce tornadoes.
