Town Square

Mackerel skies

These altocumulus clouds appeared in the sky yesterday over the city of Chicago and they look remarkably like Georgia O'Keeffe's painting that hangs in the Art Institute.

These clouds are often referred to as a "mackerel sky" that comes from the visual resemblance between these cloud patterns and the scaled skin on the back of an Atlantic mackerel fish.

The name was popularized by early sailors and mariners who relied on observing cloud formations to predict weather at sea.

Sailors created sea rhymes to remember what this cloud formation signaled for incoming weather: '"Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet and never long dry."

"Mackerel scales and mare's tails make lofty ships carry low sails."

When a mackerel sky appears alongside wispy "mare's tails" (Cirrus clouds), it typically signals an approaching warm front and lowering air pressure.

Within 12 to 36 hours, wind speeds generally pick up and steady rain follows—hence the maritime warning to lower high sails before stormy weather arrives!

This monumental painting is Sky Above Clouds IV (1965) by Georgia O'Keeffe at the Art Institute of Chicago, it is displayed on the large wall overlooking the grand staircase. Painted when O'Keeffe was 77 years old, this oil-on-canvas masterpiece measures an incredible 8 by 24 feet (2.44 × 7.32 meters) and was inspired by the views she witnessed from airplane windows.

The clouds predicted accurately. It was unusually warm for mid October and then we had rain all night.

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Comments · 8

@rishehri(56)· 14h
The sky is so beautiful, it's truly a painting. That photo with the building that created perspective is amazing, seeing different patterns in nature has always made us humans look at the world differently. Here, like fish scales, it can take on different shapes. It's important to understand that nature inspires, especially for artists, who, as a painter myself, I think are the eyes of society and capture moments that people might simply pass by. Some people don't even look at the sky when they go out in the morning because they are busy and preoccupied with the hardships of life. I tried this once at my workplace and the result surprised me. I asked five of my colleagues when you came from home to work today, was the sky cloudy? Was it blue? Did you look at the sky at all? .... Surprisingly, four of them hadn't even looked at the sky. Thank you for sharing these beautiful images
@steven-patrick(74)· 1d
I love the rhymes used to remember weather patterns. I always like beautiful use of the language. I had the chance to walk a neighbors woods last week. We happened upon one of the owners out in the woods as he was cutting the last of the firewood for the season. We were looking for a heron rookery which we never found but he described the young herons as awkwardly and beautifully ugly. I was struck by his words perhaps because I knew he was a poet. Until he started speaking of the herons, he appeared as any other old Vermonter you might encounter working out in the woods.
@kellyane(73)· 2d
I remember my mother telling me that when planting sweet potatoes, the clouds should look like rocks, just like in the picture. According to her, this is a sign that the tide is low. Sweet potatoes should be planted during low tide, so if you live far from the coast and don't know whether it's low tide, you can simply look up at the sky. If the clouds look like rocks like these, she says it's low tide.
@indiaunited(71)· 2d
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@encuentro(72)· 2d
Hola hermosa foto muy original esas nubes y el edificio
@jennifercuza(63)· 2d
Buenos dias amigo estan muy hermosa las fotografías de las nuves y tiene mucha calidad ,es verdad q la naturaleza es unica ella re sorprende y ve cosas interesantes
@mybbangladesh(52)· 2d
Beautiful photography and insightful information It's amazing how nature inspires masterpiece paintings like O'Keeffe's Great read!
@pixresteemer(71)· 2d
!BEER !GLYPH