Week 14: Nimbostratus praecipitatio, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jenny Odell

Fig. 1. “Alto-Stratus,” from Atlas International Des Nudges (Paris, France: Gauthier-Villars et Fils, 1896).

Headnote#

If you didn’t know that The International Cloud Atlas exists, then you do now.

First published in 1896 by the International Meteorological Society in France, this trilingual edition codified nearly a century’s worth of taxonomic attention by certain Western European intellectuals, or, shall we say, lay-abouts. Apart from folkloric and indigenous systems of cloud-reading, the scientific classification of cloud formations began right around 1800, when Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Luke Howard independently developed lexicons in French and English, respectively. Lamarck’s evocative French phrases (i.e., en balayeurs, or broom-like) could not compete with Howard’s Latinate constructions, which won the endorsement of none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote a poem mythologizing the English cloud-gazer. By the time the first Atlas was published, Howard’s romantic pastime had become a gentlemanly institution, housed in national bureaus and eventually international organizations; the project went through many print editions over the next 120 years, before going digital in 2017.

Have I mentioned that springtime can be a polarized, multitudinous season? The mornings are chilled, and the afternoons warm (or vice versa). The ice thaws and leaves behind a trash-filled swamp on the sidewalk. Preemptive acts of undeclared war roil the globe. Rolling rain clouds suffocate the cold lower atmosphere—evoking the “Sad destiny of the troubled world!,” in Goethe’s telling—even as they bring the rain needed to grow new life and, perhaps, discover spiritual transcendence. Cloud-reading is a fitting activity for such a season, with its paradoxical fusion of attention and lethargy, strain and relaxation, precision and imagination. It might reveal to us not only the strange contours of the sky but “the sheer volume of emotions” drifting behind our eyes.

The genus Nimbostratus was first introduced in the 1930 edition of the Atlas because “the definition of nimbus in the Atlas of 1910 led to some confusion” (p. 14, n. 1)—scandalous, I know!* Due to the formation’s uniform and featureless character, it is not conventionally divided into species. However, the supplementary feature praecipitatio can be appended to the genus when it produces continuous precipitation that reaches the ground (in contrast to virga, referring to precipitation that evaporates mid-air).

* The problem, specifically, was “confusion…between the low, rainy layer resulting from the downward extension of Altostratus and the very low, closely packed clouds (Fractostratus or Fractocumulus of bad weather) which often form beneath the Altostratus or the above-mentioned low layer” (“Preface to the 1939 edition”).

Fig. 2. “Nimbostratus,” from International Atlas of Clouds and of States of the Sky (Paris, France: Office National Meteorologique. 1930), p. 14.

Readings#

1. Nimbus
   Now downwards by the world’s attraction driven,
   That tends to earth, which had upris’n to heaven;
   Threatening in the mad thunder-cloud, as when
   Fierce legions clash, and vanish from the plain;
   Sad destiny of the troubled world! but see,
   The mist is now dispersing gloriously:
   And language fails us in its vain endeavour —
   The spirit mounts above, and lives forever.

Goethe, from “In Honour of Mr. Howard” (c. 1820), trans. George Soane and Sir John Bowring, Gold’s London Magazine 4.19 (July 1821), 59-63.#

2. It is possible, even likely, that you’d feel terror, heartbreak, and rage while looking at clouds, at the exact same time that you feel a self-annihilating love of this world. In fact, I would be surprised if, looking at clouds for the first time in a while, many people don’t start crying just from the sheer volume of emotions we can’t allow ourselves to fully feel about what’s happening. To me, it’s so important that that conduit stays open. A fiercely protected capacity for love is, in the end, how we stay alive against the encroachments of cynicism and despair.

Jenny Odell, “What Does It Mean to Watch Clouds? What Can It Mean?” Jenny Odell’s Newsletter (July 4, 2025).#

Supplementum#

• Thea Applebaum Licht, “Luke Howard’s Essay on the Modification of Clouds (1865),” The Public Domain Review (Dec. 2, 2025).

• Maria Popova, “89 Clouds: A Poetic Celebration of Clouds and Everything They Mean” (The Marginalian, March 3, 2015). Rev. of Wendy Mark and Mark Strand, 89 Clouds (New York, New York: ACA Galleries, 1999).

• Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds: How An Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies (2001; New York: Picador, 2002).

• Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (New York: Melville House, 2019) and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture (New York: Random House, 2023).

Fig. 3. “Nimbostratus,” from International Cloud Atlas, Volume II (Geneva, Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization, 1987), p. 52.