Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 9 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101007/10191111325/dailydirt-more-clouds-rainbows.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101007/10191111325/dailydirt-more-clouds-rainbows.shtml chemtrail conspiracy theories, we can document weird-looking patterns in the sky and try to figure out how/why they happen. Here are just a few examples of some crowdsourced meteorology.

• The International Cloud Atlas is considering including pictures of wavy clouds, called undulatus asperatus and documented by the Cloud Appreciation Society (CAS). These wavy clouds could be the first new type of cloud added to the official cloud record since 1951. [url]
• Here's a gallery of a variety of rainbows and some other cool-looking artifacts of the sky (eg. fogbows and sundogs). If cute pictures can increase worker productivity, maybe rainbows can, too. [url]
• Pretty clouds make for great pictures, but they might also precede some pretty bad weather. Actinoform clouds can only be seen properly from space, as they spread over a hundred miles across the sky. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101007/10191111325 Mon, 8 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101008/11064111339/dailydirt-beauty-frozen-water.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101008/11064111339/dailydirt-beauty-frozen-water.shtml

Ice flowers are a delicate formation of ice crystals made under windless conditions when supersaturated water vapor above sea ice condenses into dendritic ice crystals. Ice flowers are a natural phenomenon -- typically seen early in the morning. [url]

An art project called 'Pi in the Sky' printed the first thousand digits of pi using 5 'skytyping' planes at about 10,000 feet in the air -- probably not quite high enough to form a cloud of ice crystals, but it was still cool looking. Cirrus clouds which are mostly ice crystals form at slightly higher altitudes (around 18,000 feet or higher), but skywriting-skytyping planes actually spray paraffin oil to form their messages. [url]

The "icicle of death" (also known as a "brinicle") is made of freezing water that occurs as cold, dense salt water sinks through less salty sea water. The frozen brine can kill sea urchins and starfish when it touches them on the sea floor. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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