Cloudspotting with the Cloud Appreciation Society

Monday, Oct 16, 2023 | 6:30pm

As featured in Something in Common exhibition at Central Library.

Join Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, for an illustrated tour of the sky. He will discuss how to recognize the many varied and dramatic cloud formations, from the fair-weather cotton tufts known as cumulus to the flying-saucer shaped lenticularis and the fleeting cloud undulations called fluctus. In this enlightening and entertaining talk, Pretor-Pinney explains why clouds look the way they do; how the sky has played a cameo role throughout the history of art; how clouds reveal the invisible movements of our atmosphere; and why spending a few moments each day with your head in the clouds helps you keep your feet on the ground.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder and Member 001 of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has over 61,000 members in 120 countries. He is the author of the internationally bestselling Cloudspotter’s Guide (2006) and Cloud Collector’s Handbook (2009) as well as A Cloud A Day (2021). Gavin is a winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. He is a TED Global speaker with over 1.3 million views. He has presented television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 and is a Visiting Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University and winner of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Michael Hunt award. Based in Somerset, England, Gavin co-founded the Idler, a magazine that argues for the importance of downtime in creative thinking.