Episode 172 with Julie Schultz
Wonder Clouds: Unveiling Nature's Poetry
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Julie Schultz Yes, My name is Ginny. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And here today is Julie Schultz.
Ginny Yurich Yay! Oh, good. You got your cue. This time. You messed up. You just sat there. Welcome, Julie, and welcome to me. You all come. So we're going to.
Julie Schultz Do something brand new today that we're super excited about, but also we don't know if it's going to go well. So you're going to have to just give us some feedback. Let us know what you think. But we have a new curriculum that came out last school year. It's going into its second year. There's been a lot of people that used it last school year in a digital form. People printed it out at home or they used it on an iPad, but it just came out recently, this past spring in print form as well as from ADD the Wonder Nature curriculum. It is a multi-age cross curricular curriculum that you can do with your whole family. It weaves together all the subjects and so you're learning in a way that's cohesive. It helps you to remember. It's also just fascinating. It is so cool to learn about the things that surround us. And it's interesting that through the topics, through the study of sunflowers, through the study of caves, through the study of bears, you can learn history, you can learn geography, you can learn about different career choices. You can learn science. Obviously, you can learn math and English and writing and vocabulary and all these different things. And so because we're so excited about these topics.
Ginny Yurich Yes.
Julie Schultz We thought we would do a series on the different topics that are part of our ad, The Wonder Year one. So there are 15 two week units that are available that will take you 30 weeks of the year, but probably more because we like to go in depth and follow rabbit trails. Kids get interested in different things and so our units tend to take three weeks, occasionally four. So as a last year of a full school year, possibly into a second school year, 15 units that are already available and 15 more are coming out in the fall. But we thought be fun to just talk about the different topics just so you can get a sense of how you can learn in a cohesive way. And if you're more interested in this type of learning, you can check out the curriculum. But also just because nature's a fun thing to talk about.
Speaker 3 Yes, And there's so much we did a Cloud's unit study, but it could have been so much longer. But our goal for this was to expose your family to each topic and you can jump off where it interests you to jump off.
Julie Schultz Yeah. So clouds are one of the things that are the most accessible to people around the world. They are different clouds. They change day by day. And it's interesting because it would be boring if we just had a blue sky. Blue sky. These are great. We're in Michigan, so we get a lot of cloudy days. Right now it's a cloudy day. Skies are gray, so it gets kind of annoying. But it is the truth that if it's blue all the time, that'd be boring too. So.
Ginny Yurich Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Julie Schultz We have this variety above us and the clouds give us something to learn about and to learn through the study of clouds. All sorts of interesting things. So we are going to start with the.
Ginny Yurich Show is about to begin.
Julie Schultz And this is a group of your kids. When your kids are around three and can learn about clouds and then they can talk to other people about clouds because truth be told, I didn't know what the names of the clouds were until very recently, and I've heard the words, but I wouldn't have been able to match which one went with which one. But we are starting with the Godfather of clouds.
Speaker 3 Mm hmm. Cumulus, right?
Ginny Yurich No, Luke. Oh, okay. Okay, good. Okay. All right. I leave it in. I leave it in. Well, okay, so this is this is the confusing part.
Julie Schultz There is a man named the Godfather of Clouds, and then there is king of the king of clouds.
Ginny Yurich Which is cumulonimbus. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3 I am not qualified.
Julie Schultz But you will have articulate.
Ginny Yurich It's fantastic.
Julie Schultz So The Godfather is confusing, though. The story we're talking about, the Godfather of Clouds, which is a person and the king of the clouds, The king of all the clouds they talk about is cumulonimbus. So we're going to be talking about that one at the end, because that one's really exciting. Someone actually fell through a king of clouds.
Speaker 3 20,000,001.
Julie Schultz And you went through one in a plane, which is pretty rare. Usually they try and go over them. But we're starting with the godfather of clouds. Check your notes.
Speaker 3 Julie, have you had to come down through the clouds to get back on the earth?
Julie Schultz Well, yes, But they say, like if the if you're going toward a cumulonimbus, you should go up and over over the top and not go through it like how you went through it, because it's actually pretty crazy in there. So we'll get to that at the end, though. We're going to start with The Godfather Clouds and Julie would check out Luke.
Ginny Yurich Is a.
Julie Schultz Human as a kid named Luke. Luke Howard.
Speaker 3 Yeah.
Julie Schultz Howard is considered the godfather of clouds because here is what's crazy. Until 1802, there was no classifications of clouds. No one had any way to talk about the different types of closet that there are. Until Luke came, they.
Speaker 3 Were just all clouds.
Julie Schultz Just clouds. And really before then.
Speaker 3 They were nothing. Okay. So it was not until the 13th century that clouds even had a name. Yeah, well, when they come, they'd be like, Look at that. Look at that. Look at the white thing up there. Yeah.
Julie Schultz So that's how they call them white thing.
Speaker 3 They probably.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 They were called. No, no. The old English word for cloud is cloud. And it means lump of land or a lump of rock. And in the 13th century, the scientists said cloud could also mean a lump of water. So maybe they called them lump of water. Maybe they did.
Julie Schultz Yeah. Yeah. So there was no name for clouds at all until the 13th century. And then the classifications didn't come along till the 1800s from the Godfather, Luke Howard, who was a Quaker and a pharmacist. And he went to they had like these at all society meetings where they talked about intellectual things and they probably were a little more exclusive than us.
Speaker 3 Better at this.
Ginny Yurich I don't know.
Julie Schultz They didn't have any luxuries, but they would come to these meetings. And Luke was really influenced by Linnaeus. And Linnaeus is the classification of different things. And actually he's talked about quite a bit in our curriculum.
Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.
Julie Schultz I wonder. So Luke Howard had been influenced by him and came up with a classification for Clouds based off of Latin words that we still use today. His assessment of the different types of clouds, which I think is pretty interesting. You'd have to really be astute in studying the changes from day to day to be able to take them and to separate them into different categories. And so what we hope is that when you leave today, first of all, if this is interesting to you, you're going to check out the curriculum, add the Wonder Clouds unit, and you could get 10% off that by using the code cloud. Ten clouds, ten. If you want to check it out. It's digital or print clouds ten. But oh, I should do cloud nine, but I'm not. It's cloud ten because it's 10% off. But we are going to be talking about Cloud nine, which is super interesting. We're hoping that you come away having a solid grasp whether you're eight years old, 12 years old, 15 years old. You know, Bella Wagner listens to the podcast. So say hi to Bella.
Speaker 3 Hi, Bella.
Julie Schultz So, Bella, when we see you next, we are hoping that you will know the different classifications of clouds. Well, that's we're going to be talking about today. And just kind of we have the conversation around that, but the unit encompasses way more than what we're going to be talking about today. So there are three Latin words.
Ginny Yurich That.
Julie Schultz Luke used to describe these different types of clouds. So we are going to start with the Latin word Stratos.
Speaker 3 Which it's important to note, and we learn this in many units. So your kids will learn this, that there's a common name and then a scientific name. And the scientific names are in Latin, like for plants and animals. Carl Linnaeus And it's because Latin, it's a cross, it's universal. So it's a way for scientists to talk about something universally. So clouds are the same because Luke Howard. The Godfather. Godfather clouds.
Ginny Yurich The Godfather.
Speaker 3 Yes. So kumalo means pile or heat you.
Julie Schultz But we're starting with Stratos.
Ginny Yurich So here we go. Our first of all.
Julie Schultz Because we did order them and we.
Ginny Yurich Have notes of our birds and then.
Julie Schultz We're talking about.
Ginny Yurich Stratos.
Julie Schultz Stratos, Tell us, Juli, what the Stratos.
Speaker 3 Stratos is my least favorite cloud. We see Stratos six months out of the year in Michigan and it means spread out. It's the gloomy blanket cloud of just gray.
Julie Schultz Of just nothing.
Speaker 3 Nothing, nothing.
Julie Schultz Stratos So I remember it by status because I feel like it's like, you know, people post their status. I'm feeling gloomy, I'm feeling sad. It's like it just kind of remains. It also means layer.
Speaker 3 So when people post their.
Julie Schultz Status, like, like when I'm Facebook people, but like I'm feeling gloomy, Oh, I know what the.
Speaker 3 Status is. Make you gloomy.
Julie Schultz Like a long time ago. People don't do that anymore. But remember, that was like the first.
Speaker 3 Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Julie Schultz If you were like Facebook like ten years ago, if you're nice of all us, you're not going to know we're talking about. But people would post their status. They would say they would like, I'm feeling gloomy and it would last. Like, you know, that would be like for your whole day. So a stratos cloud is that one. That kind of layers everywhere. And it also is what fog is.
Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah. Low lying stratus clouds are fog.
Julie Schultz So this dress, not a big blanket you could think about as a big blanket. And it's gloomy. And when it comes down to ground level, that's fog or mist. And this is blanketing over Michigan for a good part of the year. But what some people say is that it makes the blue skies seem a little bit better.
Speaker 3 I don't believe it.
Ginny Yurich I, I figured this.
Julie Schultz Okay. So we're going to teach you another Latin word. This Latin word is nimbus. Nimbus. And I don't. Have any way to relate it to anything but Nimbus means rain. And so we're going to combine the two. And so a nimble, nimble stratus is like a basically a blanket of rain.
Speaker 3 Yup.
Julie Schultz So sometimes we've had trips, car trips where we've road trips to different places and for hours and hours we are just getting dumped and.
Ginny Yurich You have no notes. Where do you keep your piece? You see nothing written. Yeah. Look, you're fine.
Speaker 3 Ginny.
Ginny Yurich The notes I'm sitting next to. Really? And I've got this, like six page packet of notes in Julie. She says the word written stratus, but that. But the thing about it is she keeps lip. You can get nothing else. I'm mean, you.
Speaker 3 Also have a la Croix and I can't believe.
Ginny Yurich You only wrote the word you want. You keep looking. Yeah. It's nothing is magically going to come off your paper. Julie, you need my notes. And I keep.
Speaker 3 Noticing my chair.
Julie Schultz So the nimble stratus is your big old rainstorm. So some storms come through.
Speaker 3 And.
Ginny Yurich The.
Julie Schultz Lightning storms come through and they're like, quick. Yeah, that's not a nimble and nimble stratus is the big break.
Ginny Yurich You skip you you just makes out of X you have no, no. Okay.
Julie Schultz But this is actually really an interesting thing.
Ginny Yurich This is basically this is a podcast where you came to listen to us laugh. So, Bella.
Julie Schultz I hope you're enjoying it. Okay. Thanks for being here. All right. The Stratus, and we hope you get it. This is the blanket, the stratus, the layer, your status, It like it lasts for a long time. And so the Nimmo Stratus is like just a big old rainstorm. And here's what's interesting about the Stratus cloud is that it has been used in war technique.
Ginny Yurich And trying to lead in give you something for nothing. All right. You mean the fog? Yeah. This is truth. Yes. Which is low lying, the foggiest stratus It is.
Speaker 3 There has been many times actually when we were researching this, that clouds have changed history. But one time was during the Revolutionary War. It literally changed history. It made like a curtain. You'll learn about it if you do the Clouds unit, but it made a curtain that allowed us to get over the river.
Julie Schultz Yeah.
Speaker 3 Without being seen by the British.
Julie Schultz Yeah. So really interesting. There's actually a lot of different war stories that were affected by the weather and the government has tried. Governments across the world have tried to seed the clouds to change the weather. So interesting things about that. They would put in it like dry air, dry it. They would try and put dry ice in the clouds and try and change things. I don't think it's been super successful. And in fact, there was a story where someone tried to change the weather for a certain event, a sports event or some big festival, and it didn't work. But there is something that has been tried to affect the weather just for different war scenarios. And so by learning about the Stratus cloud, you know, you're learning about science, you're learning about geography, you're learning about history, different careers that you could have. So the Stratus Cloud and the Nimbus Stratus, here's something super interesting. What shape is a raindrop?
Speaker 3 A raindrop shape.
Julie Schultz Okay, So I would have thought up until very recently that a raindrop is the shape of a tear. Yeah, a little teardrop, Right? That's what I would draw. Like I would drive the big cumulus cloud, the big fluffy cloud. And then you draw the little raindrops and it looks like little tears, like what comes out of your faucet or what comes out of your eye. But a raindrop is actually shaped like the top of a hamburger bone.
Speaker 3 It's so crazy.
Julie Schultz Isn't it Interesting? Yes. So that's what they're shaped like.
Speaker 3 And I need to view that now.
Julie Schultz I know the top half of the hamburger bun. So the name of Stratus, if you're in a big rainstorm. Now, here's something interesting that's been said about Stratus Clouds is that they really make everything else seem more special. And so this is one of the quotes that we read about the stratosphere. Stratus is like the magician's silk whipped away. Just you may think all is lost to reveal once more the spectacle of the sky. So that was written by a man named Gavin who started the morning to talk about this. The end who started the Cloud Appreciation Society.
Speaker 3 Mm hmm. And that's his book, right? Yeah. This guide. And that is in our recommended resources. Yeah.
Julie Schultz He actually has two books that are in our recommended resource list, the Cloud Spotter's Guide, which is the science, history and Culture of Clouds. He is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. So this is like the background. And then he wrote another book called 365 Skies from the Cloud Appreciation Society. It's called The Cloud a Day. And it gives all these examples and they're very cool, all these different pictures. So yeah, that is part of the Clouds unit. Those are two of the recommended books on there. So Stratus, everyone's got it. You think they got it?
Speaker 3 Yeah.
Julie Schultz So why do we think Bellino.
Speaker 3 Lee's favorite cloud And it is true.
Julie Schultz Okay, but I'm going to argue because also the Stratus cloud is the one that if you're watching a sunset, that's what's going to turn like red. You know, as if somebody hits it. And it looks really pretty at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Well, during the day.
Speaker 3 Not good. But by the end of this day, it's supposed to be sunny. And I don't believe it. So it's like your quote, like all hope is lost. I'm like, no, it's never going to be sunny.
Julie Schultz It's going to reveal itself. So that's the Stratus cloud. It comes from the Latin word layer.
Speaker 3 Yes.
Julie Schultz And it spreads it out. Mm hmm. Okay, so we're moving on to serious. Serious? Yes.
Speaker 3 Yes. This is the highest cloud. Mm hmm. It's made of ice crystals. And this is the cloud. It's like the thin wisps. That's what we call them in our family. And they're are super cool.
Julie Schultz They're really, like, pretty. They say it's the most photogenic cloud.
Speaker 3 I think they're pretty. And you can stare at the shape of them because the shape of them is caused by the wind.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Julie Schultz But they're real wispy. They don't have a super defined idea. People call them mayors till, like, a horse are some of the time. And it comes from the word wispy. Is that correct? I don't know what the Latin word is.
Speaker 3 Something like with that word is curl.
Julie Schultz Oh, you know what? Because he talked about Luke Howard and he talked about, like a little like a child's curl in the curl of their hair.
Speaker 3 Curl.
Julie Schultz Like a little curl. So that's a serious cloud. And there's a lot of fun sayings from a different kind. So there's one that says mackerel and scales and mares tails make loft ships carry low sales stock about the wind and the wind coming through, and there's lots of mares tails. It can tell you about the direction of the wind.
Speaker 3 And we talk about some of these sayings in here too, because they really stick with you.
Julie Schultz Yeah, the things are fun.
Speaker 3 Uh huh.
Julie Schultz Let's tell some other ones. I like when the fog because this is about stratus. When the fog goes up, the mountain happen, then the rain comes down, the mountain drops.
Speaker 3 Open in hamburger shapes.
Ginny Yurich And shapes.
Julie Schultz How about this one? This one's going to be for Cumulus. And this one says in the morning mountains in the evening fountains.
Speaker 3 Oh.
Julie Schultz These are so cute.
Speaker 3 Those are cute.
Julie Schultz I really like them. So definitely that one about mares Tails, they're often called mares. Mares tails, white, feathery, the highest ones up there.
Speaker 3 Mm.
Julie Schultz And so Bella should be able to identify them.
Speaker 3 And if there's just a few indicates like, hey, the weather's pretty great, and if there are a lot of cirrus clouds, it usually indicates a weather shift within 24 hours.
Ginny Yurich Well.
Speaker 3 Not that interesting.
Julie Schultz Yeah, I definitely can use the clouds. And so I feel like, you know, it's like hundreds of years ago, I'm sure they were predicting the weather, but they didn't have any words for the clouds. So it's such an interesting thing. Okay, so we're on a cumulus.
Speaker 3 Cumulus are the godfather of clouds. The king of the clouds. I know.
Julie Schultz The Godfather is.
Ginny Yurich Luke.
Speaker 3 These are my favorite.
Julie Schultz Were actually not there yet. We're not a cumulonimbus or a cumulus.
Speaker 3 And they are my favorite. These are the clouds that every child in the whole world draws in the sky with little m shapes four birds and a flat little line for grass. These are the ones. And then the.
Julie Schultz Little fluffy clouds. They're called cumulus and they have a defined edge. And really the cumulonimbus, which we're going to talk about next, because remember, Nimbus means rain. Those are the big rain clouds. But before they get really big and mountainous like that, these are the ones that a lot of times people use and they try and guess the shape or they try and make up what the shape would be. And in that, a cloud, a daybook is so cool. There's ones that look like a cat, one that look like a bird. They're phenomenal and no one wants to listen to us looking at pictures of a book that they can't see. But I am actually going to show you why we're sitting here, because I just thought they were so cool. I wrote down some of the page numbers. People are going to have to check it out. But these are the ones where you're looking up when you're like, What is that shape? And you can play this all day long and this one has.
Ginny Yurich Look at that can of over the.
Julie Schultz Whole city. It's only.
Speaker 3 Yeah, that is cool actually. Jenny Yeah, I read that there used to be a mental illness called Para Doula. Well, it used to be a sign of a mental illness. If people could see objects in the clouds or on trees or any parts of nature.
Julie Schultz Isn't that.
Speaker 3 Interesting? I mean, hundreds of years ago, but it was looked at as like a very negative thing, and now it's seen as a sign of creativity.
Julie Schultz It sure is. Mm hmm. What do you see in the clouds? So those are the cumulus. Are cumulus are the ones are when you go outside and that comes from the Latin word heat.
Speaker 3 Or pile.
Julie Schultz Heap or pile, it's a pile of droplets all together. So there's a really famous one called Lenticular Iris, and that's the one that a lot of times people are mistaking for UFO. A UFO is a flying saucer, so it's got a specific shape. The lenticular areas and there's a lot of within all of these different types of clouds, there's a lot of very unique ones. There's the wave clouds and there's the mackerel sky. There's sundogs, moon dogs, really all sorts of things I didn't even realize existed. But there are a lot of different types. Cumulus clouds. And in fact, for each of these categories, Stratus, Cirrus and Cumulus, there are many different.
Speaker 3 Varieties of.
Julie Schultz Those that people could learn about and research. But just, you know, those three main words, you'd be able to name mostly everything that you've seen.
Speaker 3 Yup. And lenticular clouds don't produce rain. Interesting fact. Yeah. So they can never be a nimble. They'll never be like a nimble lenticular Iris. Mm hmm. And lenticular is in Latin means lens and that.
Julie Schultz Interesting. No, I didn't say that.
Speaker 3 It looks like a lens. I've never seen one in real life.
Julie Schultz I haven't either pictures.
Speaker 3 But I'm looking now. And they're formed by wind blowing across the mountain range and then condensing.
Julie Schultz Oh, yeah. Runs into it. Yeah. You have to have that. Those high things. You have to have the mountains in order to form, which.
Speaker 3 Is why.
Julie Schultz Identical areas. Yeah, they're not in Michigan. But if you live in a place that's mountainous, it's highly likely that you've seen one of those types of clouds since we've been studying clouds. So I have seen a sundog. I think I've seen two actually. So if I the interesting thing is to look at and and we saw even one time where the cloud was colored like a rainbow. Yeah. Which is also a unique thing to see.
Speaker 3 And those are usually in cirrus clouds because of the ice crystals.
Julie Schultz Yeah. So Cumulus, we're going to do a talk about a specific one because this one is called King of the Clouds.
Speaker 3 Yes.
Julie Schultz And it is the cumulonimbus or the king of clouds. And this is the iconic big storm cloud. Looks like a mountain. They go so high and so and in the clouds curriculum, we talk about the atmosphere and all the different layers of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which bird can fly into the highest level. We talk about the Griffin Vulture and different things like that, but the cumulonimbus is specifically the big mountain. And so what's interesting about it is that it used to be categorized as the ninth cloud. So when they first started to categorize the clouds, they were numbered and the cumulonimbus was at number nine, it's the tallest. So you talk about being on cloud nine. Like you're up high, you're feeling good. You know, you're on cloud nine.
Speaker 3 Happy?
Ginny Yurich Yeah, you're happy.
Julie Schultz So you're on cloud nine, You're on the highest.
Ginny Yurich You're in the highest point. You're going.
Speaker 3 I ruined it.
Julie Schultz They ruined it. They changed the classification. But that same stuff being on cloud nine, it comes from the cumulonimbus. So you have a story about actually being inside of a cumulonimbus cloud and you were learning about clouds when they happen, right?
Speaker 3 Yeah. So when we were in an airplane getting ready to go to the Florida homeschool convention, the pilot had warned us we were flying into a storm in Orlando. And it was kind of cool because even though we wrote these and my kids have heard all of them, once they became like designed and beautiful, we went through all of them again and we were going through clouds. Actually, we are going through the Clouds unit right now. So and it was like a cloud field trip. So my 11 year old, he's like, Oh, look at those are cumulus clouds up. They're turning into rain clouds, they're cumulonimbus. And we were able to see them actually form. And that was really crazy because they formed so quickly. It was amazing. I was telling everyone that I took my kid on the ultimate cloud field trip, but as we were going down to land, I mean, it was bumpy. These clouds are bumpy. There's a lot going on inside. And generally the taller the cloud, the more severe the storm will be. And this was not a severe storm, but it was really, really cool to be able to see that when we were studying it. Wow. So I encourage you, if you are going to do the clouds, you know, to take an airplane ride.
Julie Schultz Where the funny thing is, that's actually probably a pretty unique experience because usually the pilots will try and go up over the clouds. So they usually tend to go up 48,000 feet and they tend to hit a ceiling.
Speaker 3 Basis.
Julie Schultz Which gives them an anvil shaped.
Speaker 3 One state. So the first layer of the atmosphere which you will learn all about in the Clouds unit, you'll learn all the layers of the atmosphere is the troposphere, and that's where clouds live. Well, the cumulonimbus, I mean, they are growing so fast, but once they hit the stratosphere, the second layer, the pressure is so great that they flatten. The clouds are flattened. And you can see it's like the anvil shape in the sky. So we have seen that since we've studied clouds in my kids are like, look at that. What we're seeing right there is the stratosphere is so cool.
Julie Schultz We even see the stratosphere through the low nimbus. It's so neat. So pilots and I think probably maybe more so, especially in small planes, they do not want to go through a cumulonimbus. Not I mean, this is a violent this is where hail comes from. Like if you ever see hail, lightning or thunder, it is 100% a cumulonimbus. So pilots do not want to go through that. And what they'll do instead of going through is they'll go up and over because there tends to be a tap. Right. And it tends to be 48,000 feet, 50,000 feet. So they're going to go up and over. Well, there's one pilot who went to go up and over. His name is Lieutenant Colonel William Rincon. And he went to go up and over the cloud and his plane malfunctioned. The engine stopped at about 48,000 feet. And so he had to figure out what to do. And he ejected and he ended up writing through the cumulonimbus with a parachute. And I'm pretty sure he's the only person who's ever actually been in a cumulonimbus cloud. And so what happened was, is the fall should have taken him 10 minutes, but because he was in the cloud, it took him 40 minutes to come down. It was freezing cold. So he got frostbite. He's getting hit by hail. There's lightning going everywhere. It took him 40 minutes. It's like throwing him up, throwing him down. He lived to tell about it, though. And he is the only person who has actually gone through.
Speaker 3 The.
Julie Schultz Heart of the king of clouds. And he was in it for 40 minutes.
Speaker 3 That's crazy. I mean, he was probably being completely thrown around.
Julie Schultz Yeah, just crazy turbulence. So the lightning is in there. And lightning is interesting because lightning gets to be four times as hot as the sun and the lightning bolts strike. They're almost 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit instantaneously. I mean, just this huge heat. And it happens in like a few millions of a second. And then that causes the expanse of air around it to make the thunder sound that waves of thunder. And so that is part of the cumulonimbus. And there's all types of lightning. You know, I thought it was only cloud the ground, you know, when you see those really striking lightning bolts. But you can also have lightning within the cloud. You can have lightning that goes from the cloud to the air. And you can have lightning that goes from a cloud to a cloud, which would be cool.
Speaker 3 Yeah, that would be cool unless you were in an airplane.
Julie Schultz Right. Just strike right across the sky. The most common is in the cloud.
Speaker 3 Mm hmm.
Julie Schultz Yeah, Because the ground is not the most common. The best lightning displays are in Venezuela. Oh, we should go.
Speaker 3 Take field trip.
Julie Schultz Field trip to Venezuela? Yeah. If you live in Venezuela, you get the best lightning displays.
Speaker 3 The best thunderstorms or cumulonimbus clouds are in the tropics.
Julie Schultz So interesting.
Speaker 3 They get the tallest there. They can get up to 14,000 miles. Wow.
Julie Schultz No, not feet I but they're.
Speaker 3 Yeah, 14,000 miles. So some clouds. The most powerful cumulonimbus clouds can actually breach through into the stratosphere.
Julie Schultz Because they're that big and that.
Speaker 3 Powerful.
Julie Schultz So powerful clouds are heavy. Some class.
Speaker 3 They say the average cumulus cloud is the weight of a jumbo jet. Wow. I don't think of clouds as having weight, but it's water vapor. Mm hmm.
Julie Schultz And if you breathe outside on a cold day, that's a cumulus cloud. So when you breathe that out, that water vapor in it and it makes that way, I mean, that is a cloud. You can breathe a cumulus.
Speaker 3 That it is cool. And in the clouds unit, you learn all about the clouds cycle, like how they're made. Mm hmm. Which is really neat.
Julie Schultz Yeah. And then there's a really specific type of cloud in Australia that got a full chapter in this cloud book. The one from the Cloud Appreciation Society. It's called The Morning Glory. And pilots surf on it with their planes. Oh, it's like super rare. It's called the Morning Glory. And they it's like this. I think it's like this long tube. And somehow they can go on top of it and it makes their plane go way faster.
Speaker 3 That's so crazy. They go.
Julie Schultz Cloud surfing.
Speaker 3 That is crazy.
Julie Schultz But only in Australia. That one's only there. Okay. Which is just such a cool thing about our world. It's like just no matter where you live, there are unique and really special things that you can learn about. And in our cloud unit, we talk about a lot of the artists that have looked at our skies and painted different things like Van Gogh.
Speaker 3 Yep, he painted. They think he's never admitted this, but it's very clear the Kelvin-helmholtz clouds. It's named after two scientists who studied these type of clouds. And these calls are actually made by having two different velocities. And in the clouds unit, the kids learn about velocity and it measures how fast something moves in one direction. And these two scientists discovered that when the velocity of two fluids is different, it forms waves because it's unstable. And this can happen in the air with clouds like the kelvin-helmholtz clouds.
Julie Schultz You know, that's a hard one to say, but it's just a wave. It's so cool, but it's moving the same way.
Speaker 3 Yeah, he might have.
Julie Schultz You name.
Speaker 3 One. And I've never seen that. But it's the same process is waves like in the ocean.
Julie Schultz Yeah. And I read a recently about because of where he lives, it would have been possible that he would have seen one.
Speaker 3 Yeah.
Julie Schultz The waves in the sky. And what a cool looking guy that's in a starry night.
Speaker 3 Mm hmm.
Julie Schultz That's in that.
Speaker 3 He. It's really neat. So in this one, we learn all about Van Gogh, this unit?
Julie Schultz Yeah. Really? There's been a lot of painters that have painted the different skies. And what a cool thing for kid to do. You know, if you're listening to this in the summer, you can go paint the different clouds. So you got three types that you would be trying to paint and it would be harder to paint the stratis, but you could paint, you know, just it just kind of a flat, big layer and plane and that maybe would make the other things stand out. Or if you painted it at a sunset or a sunrise, then this. Todd is going to get some of the color from the sun and be really beautiful at those times of day. So you could totally paint that. You could paint the mayors tails. That's a serious Frisbee in the sky. Just really beautiful, great for photos. And then the cumulus or the cumulonimbus is a big storm with all that lightning in there. And then there's other specific ones like the lenticular iris that looks like a UFO. So it'd be a fun thing to do this summer.
Speaker 3 It's a fun thing to do. Did you know Van Gogh only sold one painting for life?
Julie Schultz Unbelievable.
Speaker 3 Yeah, that's crazy. But he kept going and to self-taught.
Julie Schultz Yeah, but he really struggled.
Speaker 3 Yeah, he really struggled.
Julie Schultz There's a great book about him that we read called Within to Van Gogh. He saw the world in Vibrant Colors, and it goes through his life and has really cool questions that you can ask yourself and different things like that. So the help he got out of this, you know, the three main types of clouds came from Luke Howard. The Godfather. The Godfather came up with those in 1802 and those are the three main types. But if you add on the word nimbus, then you can further that because then, you know, nimbus means rain. And so the cumulonimbus is the big rain cloud and the nimbus stratus is that layer of cloud that just rains and rains and rains and rains for hours and hours and just is can be spread out for thousands of miles. And you can while your friends with your cloud knowledge very equal.
Speaker 3 And there's so much more in the unit itself.
Julie Schultz In the unit, you're making a prism, you're making a rainbow. You're learning about hexagons. Hawaii. One of the really interesting things is the Namib desert beetle, which, you know, in desert environments, sometimes the only water they're getting is from the fog. And so the namib desert beetle. And you'll learn a lot about it in the unit, but it has a certain way that it holds its body so that it can collect the moisture from the fog.
Speaker 3 Yeah, because that's the only moisture that this desert gets, which is crazy. It inverts its body and it has little ridges and it has the fog lands on it and it goes right into the mouth of the desert beetle.
Julie Schultz Yeah. It's got like a collection system, by the way. It holds its body. And in fact, scientists have tried to copy that.
Speaker 3 Beetle, and they can't, they can't do it. No.
Julie Schultz Yeah, it's wild. So, you know, the clouds, we what we notice about it's the mackerel sky. That is one of the things, too. Mackerel. Sky, mackerel, sky. Never long wet, never long dry. So the weather's moving in quickly and that is just a beautiful lines and just a beautiful sky. So we always are noticing the mackerel sky. And it comes from a type of mackerel fish, but only one type of mackerel fish. There's actually a bunch of types of mackerel fish, and they don't all look like the mackerel sky with those stripes on it. But that's another thing that you learn about. It's interesting how the words they coincide that there's a fish. Amazon has a name that's similar to the clouds, and you wonder which came first.
Speaker 3 Yeah, we learn about London fog, which isn't really fog. Jenny Yeah, it's pollution. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was interesting.
Julie Schultz Yeah, there's lots to learn about when we talk about clouds, so you can check it out and maybe you might even have somewhere around if you were born in time in 2004. So you know, if you're in your twenties or older, you might have seen cloud stamps.
Speaker 3 Oh, I like cloud stamps. You can do this if you born 24 or later.
Julie Schultz Whether you were born 24 or earlier, you were alive when there was cloud stamps from the post office field. But they had a bit of beg for it from the Cloud Appreciation Society. So let's end with the Cloud Appreciation Society.
Speaker 3 I want to join.
Julie Schultz We should join the Cloud Appreciation Society. They're definitely on Instagram. I saw I'll see if they'll come on to our podcast. But the Cloud Appreciation Society was started by Gavin, Gavin, Peter Piney and he's got a couple of books and they're really cool. But I love the one that has all the pictures that got sent in. But he talks about how we live in the sky.
Speaker 3 Yeah, we.
Julie Schultz Actually live in the sky and all of this stuff is around us. And he talks about how it's one of the easiest nature things to talk about because everyone experiences it. And by learning about the cloud, you learn that every single type of weather offers great things. And here's what he says Clouds are nature's poetry and the most egalitarian of her displays. Since everyone can have a fantastic view of them, we pledge to fight blue sky thinking whenever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up a cloud this monotony day after day.
Speaker 3 Okay, I'm going to appreciate the stratus clouds now.
Ginny Yurich Okay. That's good.
Speaker 3 Right? Well, I want to join.
Julie Schultz Yes. And he says most people barely seem to notice the clouds and someone needs to stand up for them. We will stand up for them.
Speaker 3 I mean, you're going to study this and you're going to notice the clouds.
Julie Schultz Yes.
Speaker 3 And you're going to notice things and you're like, oh, my goodness, I've lived this long and I've never seen that. Well, you have seen it. You just didn't notice it.
Julie Schultz Yeah. Like the moon dogs and cats and dogs. Yes, absolutely. So there we go. Hope that you notice your cloud this summer. I bet you'll see a cumulus. The name is maybe once or twice. Those are the big steamer storms that come through. And you can notice with your family and you can name them. There's really only three names to be aware of. And then you add on that nimbus and that helps with if it's a rain cloud or not a rain cloud and you can while your friends.
Speaker 3 I'm wowed.
Julie Schultz Yeah, with your knowledge. All right we're going to we said we were going to end with one of the dinner table discussion questions at the end. So each of our units end with dinner time, family discussion questions I was.
Speaker 3 Going to ask.
Julie Schultz You know, I was going to ask you all. Yeah, you were going to ask me, but you missed it. I took the book first.
Speaker 3 Because I failed this.
Ginny Yurich Year. You did great. You did great.
Julie Schultz Okay, so here is one of the questions. Oh, you already answered the one about the airplane. So that's pretty interesting. When you already answered, you actually answered a lot of these about your favorite cloud and answered that.
Speaker 3 Oh, do that. Let's do that.
Julie Schultz Okay. Okay. Okay. Stratus clouds make for some very gloomy days. So before I learn about clouds, I wouldn't have no one to dress up for. But now, if you're listening, you would know that these are the the blanket clouds of stratus clouds make for some very gloomy days. What are some things that you enjoy doing on a cloudy, gray day?
Speaker 3 Hanging out with my kids, playing games. We read a lot on those days. It's like the cozy days. And it is true. It is true. I like to say I would always want blue skies, but then I don't get the cozy days.
Julie Schultz And it's interesting because seasonal affective disorder, it definitely affects if you're more north and you have a lot of these gray days. But this heat also affects if you live in a place where there's blue skies, it's the fact that we crave variety. It's the same, same, same, same, same. It's it's a lesser amount of people, but you can still get seasonal affective disorder in areas where there's no variety, which is blue, blue, blue.
Speaker 3 All right. So here's your.
Ginny Yurich Question. Okay.
Speaker 3 Would you rather have a sky full of clouds that block the sun for an entire year? Stratus clouds or a sky absent of all clouds for a full year, just for.
Julie Schultz I would go absent. I mean, just because we lived in Michigan and it's so hard. Those are really long winters. But I mean, you can see that there's no perfect and that's not the perfect solution. The best thing is that it changes. And there's different types like we talked about today and it makes our life better.
Speaker 3 It's awesome.
Julie Schultz So thanks for being here.
Speaker 3 See us.
Julie Schultz We're on cloud nine.
Ginny Yurich Helping you today. We may have peed on our chairs and that is the and check.
Julie Schultz Out ad the Wonder Nature Curriculum Cloud unit is available. You can get 10% off with clouds. Ten clouds, ten clouds, ten. And if you're not interested, then now you know what the different types of clouds are. And you can tell your friends by Bella Goodbye noise.
