Introduction

We have to get something out of the way right now before I start this series. I have no artistic ability. I have none whatsoever. 

If you want to snicker and laugh at me, go right ahead. I am OK with that because I knew from an early age that I do not have the ability to draw ANYTHING. I absolutely suck at producing works of art and I’m OK with it. I have a friend named Philip that has promised to teach me to draw, so I am planning on working on my deficiencies!

Creativity

What I do have is creativity. I have creativity when working with data and I have that when thinking about problem-solving and getting a serious amount of work done in a short amount of time. My creativity has been expressed in a lot of different ways in this blog over the years.

One topic that has changed my perspective of being alive is the series I have been writing on global warming. If you don’t know about it, you can spend days reading my articles and working with interactive Tableau dashboards I created to learn about the changes that are going on around us. In fact, we are enveloped by this topic every day as we breathe the air that is circulating around the globe, in our atmosphere that is changing moment by moment. Here is the link in case you missed that series.

The Global Warming Evidence Continues to Build

If you are living on planet earth, you might have recognized by now that our atmosphere is changing over time. If you have been alive for more than 50 years like I have been, then you have been alive during the time of the most profound changes we have ever recorded.

Every day you can read articles about forest fires in the Arctic (Figure 1), or massive flooding and landslides that have displaced a couple of hundred thousand people in Vietnam, which are today’s topics. A day doesn’t go by without some global warming impact making headline news.

Figure 1 – Big changes are happening in our northern latitudes. Figure 7 of my referenced article tells the story.

Cloud Art

During the time I have spent thinking about global warming, what I have realized is that Mother Nature is showing us every day that she is getting perturbed by our activities that are impacting the atmosphere. Every day she draws pictures in the form of clouds. Her amazing artwork is fleeting – it is there one moment and gone the next.

The problem is that we are self-centered people. We keep our eyes to the ground. We have forgotten how to read her signals. We have forgotten how to look to the clouds to see what Mother Nature is trying to tell us, such as what will be happening that day.

For the past few years, I’ve been looking at the clouds. Whether I was in TX, GA, or TN, I have searched the clouds for signs of what Mother Nature is telling us. When I’m doing those searches, my creativity comes into play. I see figures of objects, of animals, of people – even if I can’t draw them the way I see them. These images appear in an instant and may be gone in seconds. What I have learned is that all we have to do is look to the sky to see what Mother Nature is trying to tell us.

In this series, I’m going to show you a picture of the sky. Then I’m going to ask you to see if you can see what Mother Nature is showing you. The first post will just contain the original picture. I will release my version of the same picture about 15 minutes later with my “artwork” to show you what I saw.

My artwork consists of a 10 minute or less sketch to highlight what I saw, so don’t expect much! I call this Cloudart (one word) and my 6-year-old son Jett and I are on the hunt for these images every day. When I point to the sky, he knows what I am about to ask. I’ll say to him: “Jett, what do you see?” Usually, we are in agreement.

Before we begin, don’t worry about this being a doom and gloom series. There are light-hearted examples included, too. There are beautiful images captured at sunset. There might be beautiful sunrise images, too. The Smoky Mountains are close by, and they create interesting orographic effects that produce interesting weather here in the Appalachian Mountains.

Final Thoughts

Before I begin this series, I’ll offer you one picture. Do you think Mother Nature was happy when she sent this scene my way a couple of weeks ago (Figure 2)?

Figure 2 – An approaching storm Friday, July 6th in Knoxville, TN.