At right is Asperatus, what some meteorologists from the Royal Meteorological College would like to call this specific form of cloud formation. Because all clouds should sound like they were named after Harry Potter spells, unless they become hurricanes, in which case we give them whitebread names so as to ruin as many childhoods as possible.
Apparently this is a big deal to the Cloud Appreciation Society and other people who are apparently out to prove the British really are the most boring people in the world. The name comes from the fact that the underside of the cloud looks rough, so they, in a fit of creativity, proposed naming it after the Latin word for “rough”. Personally, we just like the pretty cloud pictures that all the blog posts about this have generated. Also, we like teasing the British.
[ via the cloudbusters at Geekologie ]