The wonderment of clouds | Life on the Rocks
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 30, 2026
By Steve Ulvi
Journal contributor
We all have casual, often spontaneous interests that can become lifetime fascinations that nurture inspiration and self-enrichment. Many are tuned to certain weather characteristics in the annual progression of seasons. Our very long spring is a multipart symphony of maritime weather easing into annual biological rebirth and setting the stage for glorious summer days. Perhaps you also notice when the gray stratus clouds and cloying fog first give way to puffy cumulus clouds born of heating.
Summer, by nature, is an expansive time of new experiences and exploration as well as psychic recuperation in the warmth and long days. Our summer days and skies reflect the interplay of cold water, sun-heated islands, the high cordillera of the Cascades, strong high-pressure domes and occasional moisture-laden air masses slipping in off the Pacific Ocean.
At dawn, the unusual presence of morning clouds continues the weather story of yesterday or, more commonly, provides a vast blue emptiness, a fresh canvas. The descriptive clues of a changing story can appear like a watercolor painting emerging in multiple shades of gray and brilliant white, filling the sky. Knowledgeable observers can translate the unfolding sky display as the day progresses.
Some of us enjoy having our heads in the clouds. I have a near-lifelong attraction to fascinating cloud forms that portend weather change and promise outdoor activity adjustments. The long days of summer are the best for cloud watching, although very stable, dry blue skies, as in the last few weeks, bore me. But intensified differential surface heating, local topographic winds, orographic lifting and instability in the normal layers of the atmosphere can lead to awesome, mesmerizing beauty and ominous threat.
Of course, there are the official names from Latin and colorful, descriptive terms for 10 broad cloud types that sail in the low, middle and upper zones of Earth’s troposphere. There is an International Cloud Atlas with scores of additional cloud “species.” From the surface (mist or ground fog) to 40,000-plus feet (icy cirrus and cumulonimbus anvil tops). Clouds as vast bubbles of condensing or freezing water vapor.
I may be one of the few locals who fervently hopes for the most fantastic of summer atmospheric shows — booming thunderstorms — mushrooming above the Cascades, Olympics or Vancouver Island peaks and even more rare, due to cold surrounding water, a maximally energized cell or two sliding out over the islands to rattle windows and puddle roads.
Buildup could start with a cold front wedging under our air, but most often results from super-heated parcels of air and orographic lifting; hot, somewhat muggy air, morning Cumulus castellanus (small turret-like tops) over surrounding mountains, then flat-based clouds with visibly roiling cauliflower domes eventually maturing into immense anvil-topped thunderheads generating gusty downdrafts, hail, heavy rains and cloud-to-cloud or ground-to-cloud lightning blasts. Seeing the icy feathers of an anvil top bending in our direction is literally the icing on the cake!
The roots of this interest are certain: extensive hitchhiking, backpacking and camping in the montane west summers, a college course on the atmosphere, living and working in the Yukon River basin and being trained in state-of-the-art fire behavior analysis.
One day, I watched a fire-caused cumulonimbus (pyrocumulonimbus) shade and dampen a roaring fire front and sail across the wide river to visibly zap new wildfire starts. Seeing into the heart of nature’s magnificent powers.
