This is to my knowledge the only indisputable evidence of a nimbo-cartographic simulacrum, ever! You’ll find it on the website of the Fortean Times, a monthly magazine dedicated to reporting on anomalous phenomena (type in ‘simulacrum’ in the search box).
This particular picture of ‘Britain In A Cloud’ was sent in to Fortean Times by a Rob Gandy, who took the picture near Wadebridge in Cornwall on the morning of August 3, 1996. He writes: “It had been more ‘solid’ before I managed to get my camera, and as I watched, it slowly but surely broke up. Perhaps it was a portent of the effects of devolution following Tony Blair’s election victory the following year.”
The main cloud formation to the right does seem to give a quite good proportional representation of the island of Great Britain, with Scotland sprouting at the top, East Anglia bulging away to the right and Cornwall sticking out quite life-like (or should that be map-like?) on the left. The southern coast of England even follows the orientation it has in real life. Wales could have been done a bit better (*) and that separate cloud where Ireland ought to be is completely wrong (*) – and if it were just Ulster, then it would be too big. But all in all, not bad going for a simple morning cloud in August…
(*): insert your own Welsh and/or Irish jokes here.
Weird.
(Insert X-Files theme here)
Comment by Darrel Jones — July 23, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
Wonder if you hadn’t said anything if people would see it as Britain. Probably. Anyway the Ireland is pretty messed up but neat Great Britain.
Comment by Abestar — July 23, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
It’s a conspiracy! It’s worse than the redesign of the BBC weather map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Weather#Today
Might as well rename the island Englandland and have done with it.
:)
Cheers,
Ross
Comment by Ross — July 23, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
[...] 154 – Britain In A Cloud [image] This is to my knowledge the only indisputable evidence of a nimbo-cartographic simulacrum, ever! You’ll find […] [...]
Pingback by Top Posts « WordPress.com — July 24, 2007 @ 12:01 am
It’s good to know I’m not the only one to see Britain in the clouds.
Comment by JD — July 24, 2007 @ 1:34 am
The North of England and Scotland seem to be fading away … lol
Comment by abu ameerah — July 24, 2007 @ 6:55 am
It seems to me that most clouds I notice are shaped like Britain, or at least the north of Scotland. Either that or Dante Alighieri.
Comment by sgazzetti — July 24, 2007 @ 8:55 am
would you like to hold my heart
sofia
http://sofiawinterborn.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/sofiahold-my-heart-and-hold-my-soul-for-a-while/
Comment by A Woman — July 24, 2007 @ 9:11 am
Rather appropriate seeing as rainclouds have put large chunks of the country underwater in recent days!
Comment by Roy — July 24, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
Should send this picture to The Cloud Appreciation Society :)
Comment by homeyra — July 24, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
It’s not exactly a cloud, and it’s not really as accurate, but this reminded me of the North American Nebula. :D
Comment by Patteroast — July 24, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
Sofia, stop spamming.
Anyone have an outline of GB and Ireland overlapping the cloud, just to see how close it is?
Comment by rek — July 24, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
Yo can just see, on the left, Iceland about to crash.
Comment by Anthony North — July 24, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
rek – I created a jpg with a UK outline overlapping the cloud. But I’m a newbie and not sure how to post it or send it. It’s not terribly close.
Comment by AJ — July 25, 2007 @ 12:09 am
I received following mail from Dazed & Confused. Not wanting to make too much of a fuss, I’m not putting it in a separate post. So although unrelated to this particular map, I’m posting it in this comments section. So there.
“Your website is featured in our Dazed Digital 50 project (part of Dazed and Confused magazine), where people are asked to vote on their favourite creative website out of 50 chosen by our team. So far you have received 26 votes. Some websites have been asking their viewers to vote for them here and have really high votes, we’re worried this is making the results of the poll a bit unfair for those who haven’t been asking for support from their own viewers. Perhaps you’d like to promote this a bit more on your website to up your vote?
Here is the URL for the voting page
http://www.dazeddigital.com/projects/digital50/default.aspx “
Comment by strangemaps — July 25, 2007 @ 9:05 am
You know, back when I lived in the Edgewater neighbourhood of Chicago, I was walking up Bryn Mawr toward Clark one day when above this greasy little place where I’d get takeaway slices of pizza from, I spotted a cloud rather similar to this.
I took that as a sign that I should return to the UK to live. The moral of this story is not to trust in clouds, because… they’ll lead you to rainy weather? Dunno, but that seems accurate enough. There’s been no summer here this year.
Also quite recently I cut into some bacon and the bit left on the plate looked like the UK (though I had to craft Eire myself out of bean):
http://flickr.com/photos/daveknapik/528809575/
Comment by Dave Knapik — July 25, 2007 @ 8:03 pm
the picture is pretty kewl and strange
Comment by tristan125 — July 26, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
What homeyra said. Membership is cheap and friendly ( member #1251)
Comment by lordhutton — July 26, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
This might be a little off topic, but if you’re interested in an AWFULLY strange map of Europe, here’s the link:
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/europe/#
As you can see, the post-Cold War reality has thoroughly eluded one of America’s best sources on travel. This discovery prompted me to write a letter of complaint, suggesting that the site’s slogan be changed to “Travel Experts in the 50s.”
Taras, Kyiv, Ukraine
Comment by Taras — July 27, 2007 @ 6:57 am
Hi what do you all think about gossip. isn`t that a terrible tning to do. By the way my name is Gossip and I have no respect for justice
sofia
http://sofiawinterborn.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/sofiamy-name-is-gossip-i-have-no-respect-for-justice/
Comment by A Woman — July 27, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
Missing from Taras’s map (see #19, above):
Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine
Appearing but unlabelled (apparently because there are no “travel opportunies”, i.e., tours, in that country): Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Albania
Comment by Darrel Jones — July 27, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
The absence of travel opportunities could account for such “unidentified” countries as Latvia and Lithuania, which are shown as blank spaces with set borders.
But when it comes to Ukraine — a country the size of France/Texas with a population of 46 million — one can find no corresponding blank space. Ukraine’s borders and the country itself are totally missing from that map. (Belarus and Moldova are accorded the same treatment.)
Instead, we have a big Russia: a red space whose borders match the Soviet Union’s, less the Baltics. Which makes this map ubber strange: the U.S. recognized Ukraine’s independence on Dec. 25, 1991, a mere three months after it reestablished diplomatic ties with the Baltics.
Comment by Taras — July 30, 2007 @ 6:34 am
cool…t
Comment by toni — July 30, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Way ahead of you: http://flickr.com/photos/thy/88931516/
:-)
Comment by Kristian Thy — July 30, 2007 @ 11:23 am
Not too long ago I looked up at the sky and there was a cloud that looked *exactly* like North America, even more so than the above picture looks like the UK. I tried to get a picture of it but I couldn’t round up a camera before it went away.
Comment by Jess — August 15, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
[...] che le mappe debbano per forza rappresentare un territorio o qualcosa di reale. Questa sognante mappanuvola potrebbe rappresentare l’Inghilterra oppure la nostaglia per un impero ormai [...]
Pingback by Weblearning » Mappe, noia e idee geniali — October 12, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
It’s in the air: a cloud map of Great Britain over Seghill, Northumberland, UK: http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/index.php?showimage=2667
Comment by Peter van der Gulden — June 16, 2008 @ 7:55 am
[...] blatant. This blog already covered a few examples of cartographic pareidolia (Britain in a cloud, #154, and Jamerica, #268). Here are a few more examples that have trickled into the Strange Maps [...]
Pingback by 350 - Accidental Cartography: Between Cartocacoethes and Blatant Pareidolia « Strange Maps — December 27, 2008 @ 1:20 am
thank you
Comment by Tony — May 4, 2009 @ 2:51 am
thanks for this map..
good
luck
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 7:41 am
that is strange, I wonder if the clouds wants to tells us something, maybe rain for long time
Comment by games — May 25, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
[...] che le mappe debbano per forza rappresentare un territorio o qualcosa di reale. Questa sognante mappanuvola potrebbe rappresentare l’Inghilterra oppure la nostaglia per un impero ormai [...]
Pingback by Mappe, noia e idee geniali | Weblearning — May 25, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 4:34 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 7:06 am