Look, up in the sky! It's Cloud Appreciation Day

Thousands of cloudspotters around the world will look up on Friday, Sept. 13, so they can submit photos online for the third annual Cloud Appreciation Day.

Anyone, anywhere, can take part for free by photographing their sky and submitting an image for the 2024 Memory Cloud Atlas website.

Cloud Appreciation Day and the Memory Cloud Atlas are initiatives of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has more than 64,000 members in 120 countries.

People around the world can submit an image in real time starting at 12:01 a.m. local time Sept. 13 to memorycloudatlas.org. Register before Sept. 13 to get a reminder before the site goes live. Images can only be submitted on the day.

"Beautiful, varied and dramatic skies are added to the website from around the world on Cloud Appreciation Day – some from members of the Cloud Appreciation Society and others from the general public," said Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Cloud Appreciation Society founder and member no. 001.

More than 4,800 entries were added to the Memory Cloud Atlas on the first two Cloud Appreciation Days in 2022 and 2023. These views are still live on the website.

"We encourage contributors to include with their photograph some words about their feelings and impressions of the sky above them on the day," Pretor-Pinney said.

"In this way, the website serves as a worldwide snapshot of the beauty of clouds and of thousands of people around the world looking up on the same day. It's a record of people's feelings about the sky, which is the most universal part of nature that we all share," he said.

Anyone participating on Cloud Appreciation Day will locate their geographical position on the world map and upload their image of the sky from that spot. They can see photos being added to the Atlas in real time as images are submitted from around the world on the day.

The Memory Cloud Atlas is a collaboration with artist Justin Wiggan and will remain online after Cloud Appreciation Day, alongside the archive of past years preserving the views of cloudspotters for everyone to explore.

Source: Cloud Appreciation Society