photo #4474002

From the deck of a boat bound for Cairns, Australia, where the Daintree Rainforest meets the Coral Sea, where the mountains meet the clouds, Christine Luksza (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 58,169) sipped a glass of Prosecco and savoured a day she’d always dreamed of: snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef. ‘The marine life I’d just observed,’ she remembered, ‘was diverse, elegant, and gorgeous beyond imagination.’ But Christine still had reserves of amazement left for the clouds that had gathered while she was underwater. Towers of convection, known as Cumulus congestus, were lit from beyond to appear dark at their middles and brilliant white around their fringes. A Cumulonimbus cloud’s huge incus, the spreading canopy atop a distant storm, loomed broad across the sky beyond, overshadowing the mountains and sea. And, lurking in the shadows of these giants of convection, dark strips of Stratus hung in the foreground at the level of the terrain to resemble a bridge connecting the mountain summits. It was, in Christine’s words, ‘the perfect ending to an amazing day on planet Earth.’