There’s a whole new species of cloud
By Sara Chodosh March 23, 2017
The iridescence is caused by diffraction of sunlight in all the tiny, uniform clouds.
Clouds are a lot like Baskin-Robbins. They’re timeless, can be found all over America, and come in 31 flavors. And induce nostalgia.
Yes, there are 31 species of clouds—yes, they’re called species, just like plants and animals—in the new International Cloud Atlas. Bonus: there are also five new “supplementary features” recognized plus five “special clouds,” including the beautifully named flammagenitus, which sounds less like a localized collection of air moisture formed near wildfires and more like a wildly painful STD. And there’s a new accessory cloud, the flumen, which I can only assume is a small storage unit from Ikea (it’s actually a long, flat cloud associated with severe storms). But the pièce de résistance is the single new species: the volutus. Long, round, and rotating, in motion they look a bit like cloud hot dogs roasting on a spit. Only prettier.
http://www.popsci.com/theres-new-species-cloud-celebrate-with-some-pretty-pictures
