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We report in the late afternoon: we saw the bewilderment in the eyes of our expert before we saw the funnel cloud for ourselves. It never made it to the ground; there was never a storm, nor even a cumulonimbus in sight. And just as quickly as it had formed, it vanished.

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Love the details about red sprites. This is the fourth time I’ve drawn them for Reports and I’m a big fan. They’re basically magic to me. If anyone wants to learn more about Transient Luminous Events, these wonderful phenomena that all have really whimsical names, I want to recommend Paul M. Smith and Pecos Hank’s YouTube videos about them, since they’ve both done great work documenting them. Pecos Hank is even known for discovering ghosts (Green emissions from excited Oxygen in Sprite Tops), which are these very faint green glows that can appear after red sprites fade away. All this TLE stuff is fairly recent (although it was predicted to exist as early as the 1920s!), and quite fascinating.

I think it’s delightful in a bit of a cosmic horror way to learn about gigantic jets and how they can reach up to 90 km into the atmosphere (that’s about 56 miles).

As usual, I’m no expert either, but since we mentioned auroras already, the way they form is indeed very similar, it’s just that all the excitement comes from outer space. Basically, when the sun parties a little too hard and it ejects a lot of plasma mass, it causes disturbances among the charged particles in our magnetosphere, which then precipitate into the higher parts of our atmosphere, and thus the ionosphere. This is where, as @identifying-clouds mentioned, all the fun stuff happens. When the process of ionisation occurs, a bunch of photons are released. Among other things, the height at which this happens will determine the colour that we perceive.

Right now, we’re at the height of a Solar cycle, and it’s my understanding that there’s a lot of solar activity going on, which explains all the wild auroras we’ve been witnessing (in May of last year, we had the biggest solar storm in 20 years, if you’ll recall, the auroras were visible in Mexico and South Africa, wild).

This is my limited understanding of the stuff that happens above our heads, take it with a grain of salt!

I couldn’t resist reblogging this one, thanks @identifying-clouds!

We report: in the small hours of the morning, we caught a few fairies dancing far above the storm. They immediately hid from view again, obviously self-conscious of our noticing them. Our expert whispered about transient luminous events, as though afraid of spooking them away.

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I just want to say I love your weather reports project so much and I can't get over how good you are at drawing clouds. I can't tell you how many times I've been scrolling through my dash and gone "woah what a cool photo!" and then seen the caption and realised it's a cleverreports drawing

Thank you so much for your message, you are very kind! I enjoy drawing clouds so very much, so this means a lot.

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Hello, i would like to use an artwork from your cleverreports project in a writing project of mine, specifically this one:

My project won't be published or anything, just publicly shared in a little online community, and i'll credit you in it. I was just wondering if it was okay :)

[Image ID: Digital painting of a sunset scene: the sky is a faded yellow, mostly covered in clouds. The clouds are bright orange where the sun hits them, moving on to a purple-grey where it doesn't. There are waves and dips in their shapes. Dark silhouettes of houses and a utility pole in the distance. /end ID]

Hi, thank you for asking! Go for it, I really don't mind :)

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hello, i deeply deeply love your weather reports project... it always brightens up my day :) thank you so much for crossposting to tumblr! ☁️🌦️🌤️🌧️🌥️

Hi!

Thank you so much for such a lovely message, it truly means a lot! I hope that the reports can keep accompanying you for a long time.

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today! at dusk!! right outside my window!!! the phenomenon lasted until the sky became completely dark; it's cool how you can just about see the iridescence in the last picture, with light almost gone... it all happened quite fast BUT since i was home i managed to snap a picture with my nice camera! :) i was in a perfect position to look at the clouds since the sun was so low and hidden by other apartment buildings!! it was quite hard to focus on, both with my eyes and the camera, it had such gentle pastel colour to it.. i thought of your blog the second i saw this haha, hopefully my excitement is palpable! 😅

[Image ID: First two pictures depict a blue sky in low light, with a long, bright cloud showing a mother-of-pearl iridescence, pastel rainbow colours spread out over the whole cloud. The third picture features the same cloud, but the sky is now covered in long, thin, dark grey clouds that partially obscure it. On the last two pictures, there are silhouettes of bare trees and a roof in the lower tier of the frame. /end ID]

Thank you so much for sharing these with me, they're absolutely gorgeous!! I'll admit I'm super jealous. Iridescence is always such a treat.

I feel your pain when you talk about how hard it is to focus on. I still think about that one time I saw some green iridescence in an orange sunset and could not even remotely capture it in pictures. These pictures actually look great, you can really see the whole spectrum there!

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hi i love your meteorological fiction project i think the paintings are absolutely stunning but you got me interested in clouds so: where did you learn about the different types, species, varieties etc?

Hello! Apologies for taking so long to reply, things have been quite hectic lately.

I'm so glad you like the reports, thank you so much!

I've previously given a few references, but I don't mind going a bit more in depth about this.

I only knew about a few basic cloud types back when I started. I just stumbled upon a basic cloud guide by Richard Hamblyn while I was in the library one day, and I pretty much went from there. Now, I tend to recommend a different book from the one I first got, if only because mine was a bit more of a collection of pictures.

The one I recommend is The Pocket Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn, which has gotten an updated edition a couple years ago. It's great, it's cheap, it's small, but it's got all the basic things you might want as a beginner, and you can have it on you at all times so you can use it to identify clouds in the wild. I say this a lot, but I think it's the most important part in learning about clouds. Pictures are great, and they teach you a lot, but being outside and watching the clouds change makes a real difference, because they're always. changing. Cumulonimbus, for instance, look so wildly different from one stage to the next.

Now, there are also wonderful free resources here on the Internet. I favour these ones that I've given before:

What's This Cloud explains in simple terms the different types and subtypes of clouds. There are diagrams, identification lessons, a very helpful free e-book.

Cloud Appreciation Society is one of my favourite websites. It features a gallery of pictures submitted by observers from the whole wide world that you can easily sort through, though not every picture is tagged super thoroughly. There's also a message board, clouds-related news, and so on.

The International Cloud Atlas by the WMO is a treasure trove, and a great official source for meteorology. It goes in depth on all the meteorological phenomena that have been officially identified. Want to read about the orographic influence on clouds? Ohohoh, have fun on the International Cloud Atlas!

I'd also like to mention you can easily find PDFs of On the Modification of Clouds by Luke Howard (1803), an essay that exposes the clouds nomenclature that we still use to this day. It's kind of fascinating, and it's got lovely illustrations.

Overall though, it's a lot of trial and error. I still struggle a lot. I forget all the names sometimes. But it's fantastic, I love learning about clouds.

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Birds in grey skies for my daily meteorological fiction project, Reports From Unknown Places About Indescribable Events (You can now find it HERE ON TUMBLR but also, on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, archives on my website).

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I really like your blog about weather reports from undisclosed locations! The art is gorgeous

from - @realm-of-clouds

Thank you, I really appreciate it!!

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But, but, I thought you were truly painting what you saw in the real world. I must have missed it when I followed you, but I really believed.

So, do you look up stock pictures and use that as inspiration? I always imagined you took your own pictures while out and about and then worked off of those.

I'm sorry you feel conned, it's never been my intention!

This has always been a fictional project about the journey of a reporter and an expert experiencing a wide spectrum of events together, which is why I always introduce it as meteorological fiction.

Most of the reports are based on things I've seen and pictures I've taken myself, but occasionally, usually for rare phenomena, I do take inspiration from other people's pictures. For instance, I've sadly never seen northern lights for myself, nor have I ever witnessed red sprites.

I always try to make sure the events are possible at the time when I draw them (the moon phases are always accurate), and for the vast majority of the reports, I speak from experience. But in the end, exactitude isn't the goal for me, it's storytelling, even if it's subtle.

I think the whole thing probably used to be more obvious, and I did make a text adventure game as part of this project in 2022, but I definitely wouldn't expect anyone to know the extended lore of Reports. I'm pretty sure a bunch of people still think they're photographs anyway.

Sorry again though! It's really meant to be a bit of fun. If it makes you feel better, I'm very invested in this weather stuff, so I do my best to imagine what it'd feel like to witness these things. Also, please know that if I had ever seen this in person, it would be all you'd hear me talk about to this day:

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Wait, what does it mean that it's a "fiction" project?

It just means that they're fictional stories about fictional weather! It's all invented. As much as stories about the weather can be, but, you know, these aren't factual reports about the weather I see outside. I also don't have an expert friend. Frankly, it's all a sham.