This evening as we drove north to Winnipeg to celebrate GeeVs birthday (dinner at La Garage (excellent!), frisbee, frolics, and general attempts-to-do-headstands-and-cartwheels silliness at Assiniboine Park, capped off with gelato at Nuccis (also good - raspberry and dark chocolate for me)) the clouds were lining up in rows again. It seems to me that this is a recent phenomenon, or else it's a regular phenomenon that I've only begun to notice over the last four years (which is more likely the case). Four years ago, on the way home from a short vacation near Ely, Minnesota (northern Minnesota), I first noticed that the clouds were lining up in rows, or you might say they rippling like sand dunes, or snow drifts, or water waves. Whatever. Each time I've noticed this, it seems to me that the weather has been unsettled. Lots of wind, usually. I don't know why the wind would cause this. Like I said, I don't even know if what I'm seeing makes any sense. It could totally be me, and my perceptions of things that makes it seem this way to me.
Anyway, today my curiosity overcame me - that and the wonder that is the internetsssss - so I searched "What causes clouds to line up in rows?" and
this was an answer I found, from www.pilotsofamerica.com. According to this site, it's the wind, and glider pilots call them "cloud streets". Well that's pretty cool!
Speaking of glider pilots, my friend Norman Schmidt has, over the last few years, been terribly afflicted with an inner ear condition that makes him feel constantly dizzy. So he can't fly his glider anymore. He's a retired UM Fine Arts prof who has published a number of books on making high-end paper replicas of airplanes.
It might be like asking for a miracle, but it would be great if we could all spend some positive energy time wishing for Norman's inner ear crap to clear up so that he could get a few more glider rides in before ... well ... you know. I think we all do.
Here are a few covers of his books:
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