I had crossed the world to meet this cloud, and, finally, here we were, face to face. I held my hand to shield my eyes from the brilliant rays, now that the sun was well off the northeastern horizon. And these cascaded down the cloud’s face, casting long, warm shadows along the ripples of its surface. The undulations gently rose up with the progress of the wave, before disappearing over the crest.

In so many words, Gavin Pretor-Pinney describes his first encounter with an unusual and wonderful cloud called the Morning Glory. The setting is Burketown, south of the Gulf of Carpenteria, halfway between nowhere and oblivion in the hinterlands of northern Queensland, Australia. To this tiny community, a growing number of glider pilots make annual pilgrimage, convening to take advantage of the ultimate gliding experience: surfing the Morning Glory. While this wave-like cloud formation–and it is a wave, the product of a rolling current of air advancing linearly across the sky–occurs elsewhere in the world, the Queensland Morning Glory is its finest example. And little, nowheresville Burketown is the Morning Glory Capital.

Surfing the Morning Glory is just one of the fascinating, warmly written, often humorous accounts you’ll find in The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds. Who better to write such a book than Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society. A lover and student of clouds since his childhood, the author takes you for a look at clouds from many angles. Working his way up from the atmosphere’s lower levels, he not only provides an excellent, well-organized introduction to cloud nomenclature, including the various species and varieties of each cloud genus, but he also shares personal and informative bits and pieces that render the richness of his subject in an imaginative, often funny, and sometimes off-the-wall manner. Through it all, Gavin’s passion for clouds shines like sun pillars in a sheen of stratocumulus.

In The Cloudspotter’s Guide you’ll revisit the terrifying experience of Lt. Col William Rankin, who in 1959, having jettisoned his crippled aircraft in the midst of a thunderstorm, became a human hailstone and lived to tell the tale.

You’ll also set foot inside the strangest “structure” ever designed–the Blur Building of the 2002 Swiss National Expo, made entirely out of cloud. And you’ll join Gavin in an amusing and educational fantasy trip backstage at a Frankie Lymon concert, as Gavin holds up the event in an effort to explain to the singer why the rain falls from up above.

There’s plenty more to this little book, named one of the Best Books of 2006 by The Economist. I spotted it a few weeks ago on the shelf at Schuler Books & Music while looking for some weather-related reading and decided to give it a try. Good choice. The Cloudspotter’s Guide is a whimsical, informative, and heartfelt read, written in a popular tone that will engage pretty much anyone who has ever looked up at the sky with a sense of childlike wonder and adult curiosity. Weather nerds, stick this one in your library. You’ll reach for it more than once, not just to refresh yourself on cloud nomenclature, but also to remind yourself why you’re doing so.