First — the friendly part
Hello and welcome! You have arrived at the fourteenth stop on our little ring, which means somebody clicked a green button somewhere and thought of us. That's lovely. Thank you.
Here is what we do here, said plainly and with a smile: we watch one cloud. Not clouds. A cloud. It has been over the Kettleback Ridge, thirty-one kilometres northeast of town, since the afternoon of June 4, 1997, and it has not gone anywhere, and it does not appear on any weather product we have been able to obtain, and we have obtained a great many.
We are not upset about this. Please don't be upset either! It's a very pretty cloud. But we do keep records, and we do think somebody should be told, and the appropriate somebodies have all been extremely polite and unhelpful, so — the ring. Hi. ☺
Quick FAQ (we get asked a lot, and that's okay!)
Q: Isn't that just a lenticular cloud?
A: A wonderful guess! Lenticulars form and dissolve. Ours has a freckle — a small darker patch, lower right — and the freckle has been in the same place for twenty-nine years. Clouds do not have freckles. We adore it anyway.
Q: Have you asked the airport?
A: Yes! Three times! They were so nice. Their radar shows clear sky over Kettleback. Their pilots, when asked in person and off the record and after a beer, say "oh, the shelf." They call it the shelf. Nobody wrote that down officially. We wrote it down. ☺
Q: Are you okay?
A: We're great! Thanks for checking. That's kind.
Today's shape
Volunteers phone in a shape each morning. It's the only part of the log that changes, and honestly it's most people's favourite part. Here's what's on the board right now:
Left: the freckle at 400%. Right: Dot's separation study, 2003, done on the library photocopier because the library photocopier was free on Tuesdays and Dot is thrifty.
The visitor log — please sign it, we'd love that
Nothing you type goes anywhere. It stays right in your own browser, on your own machine, and that is on purpose, because a previous version of this form emailed us and then the emails stopped arriving, and we'd rather not do that again. So this is just for you. And for us, in spirit. ☺
Your entries (0)
- Nothing yet! The form above is friendly and does not bite.
Standing record
| First confirmed sighting | 4 June 1997, 3:50pm, by Dot Vekmeyer while hanging sheets |
|---|---|
| Consecutive days present | — |
| Angular width | 2.1° ± 0.1, unchanged since first measurement |
| Shadow behaviour | Casts one. Ridge goes cool at 4pm sharp. Very reliable. Nice for picnics. |
| Rain produced, total | None. Not one drop. Twenty-nine years. |
| Appears on public forecast products | No (we asked nicely, six times, and everyone was so pleasant about it) |
A gentle note about the other stops
Some of our neighbours on the ring get a bit heated. We're not like that here. If you've come from #13 (the fellow with the pipeline maps) — he's a dear, he means well, and he is wrong about the reservoir. If you're heading to #15 — bring patience, it loads slowly, and Marguerite hand-codes everything herself at 74, which we think is fantastic.
We don't know what our cloud is. We're not going to pretend we do. We just think somebody ought to have written it down, so we did, every day, for twenty-nine years, with a smile. ☺
You are at stop 14 of 21. Site joined the ring 2 Feb 2001. Ring maintained by "Bev at the co-op," who has never told us her last name and doesn't have to.
☺ NO POP-UPS EVER ☺ HAND-COUNTED ☺ COFFEE ON ☺ VISITS: 1