August 2025

Digital painting of big, fuzzy, dark grey clouds spread out across a light grey sky.

August 2nd

We report: welcome to a short moment in time when the clouds are just like this. It took the wind, the amount of humidity in the atmosphere and the pressure of it too, some seawater, and us looking up at the whole picture. The sky has never been and will never be this again.

Digital painting of a blue sky filled with a variety of small clouds, all arranged in clusters, some of them wave-like, others similar to freckles. The whole thing is a little chaotic.

August 1st

We report: July was so full, bright, and hot; August meets us with a slow burn, and shy glances from the sun. The clouds will not settle into any one shape. We appreciate the lack of extremes in the mild weather, and even the wind that has us keep a jumper in our backpack.

Digital painting of a sunrise sky, tall clouds half-bathed in pink-orange light, and coloured a deep purple where they fall in the shadows. Where it’s clear, the sky is orange. There are a few birds scattered over the frame.

August 4th

We report as the sun is bruising purple behind clouds. It takes us some days to realise it, but this August already feels like a summer's end. As always, we smell it in the air; subtle, but something colours it with deep, earthy tones. Today, there is melancholy in newborn light.

Digital painting of a countryside landscape before dawn, in morning mist. There are many white flowers in the foreground, trees and electric poles in the distance. The sky is a foggy blue, with a thin gap of light coming through.

August 3rd

We report: along country paths, a lot of umbels have been going to seed early. In the dark and the fog, our expert is trying to figure out what is hogweed, and what is Queen Anne’s lace - crouched in the tall, sodden grass, their neck craned to examine the leaves and the stems.

Digital painting of a blue sky filled with clouds with shredded edges, some of them minuscule; the light is coming from behind the clouds in distinct rays that create contrast in the blue of the sky.

August 5th

We report: it does not always feel very right, naming clouds. Sometimes, it seems inadequate, not to mention a hardship, to point at a mirage, and to call it out in its most transient, liminal form. The words are never enough to define what is never static, always ephemeral.

Digital painting of a blue night sky over the mountains, full of pin pricks of stars, and a round, orange moon. In the foreground, there are bushes and tall blades of grass.

August 7th

We report in the light of a waxing gibbous moon, a grand two percent short of full. Our expert is complaining about the ongoing attacks of mosquitoes, but they are the one who suggested this moongazing spot. Up here, the wind rattles the seedheads in the tall grass.

Digital painting of a field of sunflowers under a heavy, grey sky. There is a line of dark trees on the horizon.

August 6th

We report on a day when the cloud cover is thick, has not budged all day; yet the sunshine has found a way down here. When we stand still, we hear the summer insects living their summer lives, even on this windy, cloudy day. The crickets jump in front of our feet.

Digital painting of a night sky, mostly clouded over in black but for an opening that lets stars shine. The sky is dark blue, the stars are multicoloured. The edges of the clouds glow with the light of the moon out of frame.

August 11th

We report: the stars show up amidst the clouds like precious stones in a velvet jewellery case, a cracked geode. They twinkle and shift in colour with the wind, and we cannot see the constellations they belong to, but they seem important and special enough on their own.

Digital painting of a sunrise sky, blue, slightly tinged with green, full of wild touches of orange and yellow, and a few dark blue clouds as well.

August 8th

We report yet another iteration of a classic summer scrape: on a hot night when the heavy air keeps us awake, we open our window. In the morning, the cold, humid air leeches all the warmth away, waking us up. We grouse as we go to close it, but the smell of dawn is a joy.

Digital painting of a blue sky filled with swirly clouds, bathed in golden light, grey in their shadows.

August 9th

We report: we are reaching the end of the afternoon, and the weather has not been decided today. We have been witnessing a back and forth, some of the clouds dissipating as others are building up. There is static electricity in the air, and we get a jolt when we touch our expert.

Digital painting of a countryside landscape: a hill of tall, green grass with trees and banks under a bright, clear blue sky, with a a row of tiny white clouds on the right-hand side of the frame.

August 21st

We report: here, the grass is still tall and green, and the bees are hopping from the camomiles to the thistles at the foot of hedgerows. The skylarks are equally busy, passing us time and time again as though they were making a game out of it. It smells warm and dry.

August 10th

We report in the worn out afternoon, around the same time as the day before. After everything, the churning, tearing and whirling of the clouds, it comes back to this: tired blue and faded light filtered through the dust and the damp that live in the sky. We breathe through it.

Digital painting of a sunset sky, layers of different types of clouds in pink light, blending in purple in the darkness . Some of the clouds are long and flat, some are small and scraggly, and others are ridges of pink high in the sky.

August 12th

We report in the gathering of night clouds: summer heat has returned in the past few days, unremitting, hazy. Every bit of breeze that comes to move it along feels magical, so when the wind rises tonight, it takes at least a few sneezes from our expert before we go home.

Digital painting of a bright blue sky, filled with sweeping cirrus. There are intricate, translucent arabesques meeting one another in the clouds.

August 13th

We report: the train station was especially crowded this morning, but we still found fold-up seats on board, side by side with our expert. The windows are cracked open, and the sound of the tracks is incredibly loud, yet the rhythm of it, and the vibrations are somehow soothing.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, yellowish light filtering through the dark grey masses of shredded clouds. There is a chimney peeking out from the bottom of the frame, with a gull sitting there.

August 14th

We report on a stormy morning: we had been expecting this weather last night, or even yesterday afternoon, but it came late. We were still waiting for it. The first bit of thunder is long, uninterrupted, like a drum roll. It is still far away; we can wait a little longer.

Digital painting of a cloudy pre-dawn sky, indigo, blue, purple tones mixing together in half-light.

August 15th

We report: we have been sleeping under the stars for a few days, trying to see the Perseids, but as it happens, we mostly got dew-sodden sleeping bags, mosquito bites, and a constant feeling of exhaustion. Now that the peak has gone, we hope our expert’s passion will relent.

Digital painting of a sunset scene, tall, very voluminous clouds, golden light shining onto them from the side, blue in their shade.

August 16th

We report in the shade of this day, still warm, still a heartbeat there. We forgot to do many of the things we had set out to do, we missed a lot of the clouds, we opened doors and never closed any of them. None of it waited for us to come back, but we get to try again tomorrow.

Digital painting of a seaside landscape: a hazy blue sky with dusty yellow on the horizon, and a bright sun. Beneath it, the sea reflects it, dark rocks emerging from the pale water.

August 17th

We report: by the glassy sea, where the wind does not blow, the sun grabs us in its searing claws and does not let go. On the winding coast path, we carefully pick blackberries amongst the thorns, and they are warm in our mouth. We feel the back of our neck reddening.

Digital painting of a stormy sky above swaying trees; the clouds are grey, opaque, with a pink lightning bolt in the middle of the sky, glowing brightly.

August 18th

We report about business inside of clouds. We are somewhere below a cumulonimbus, full of strong electric charges of opposed signs, and above the ground, in turn positively charged by influence. The result is loud, colourful, and has us standing a safe distance from trees.

Digital painting of a cityscape at night, only scattered, hazy lights in a purple blur, under a dark blue, cloudy sky.

August 19th

We report: after the storm cleared out, the rain remained through twilight. It was quiet rain, the kind that blurs out edges and angles, white noise rather than a drumbeat. We see minuscule beads of water catching on our expert‘s hair as they refuse to put their hood up.

August 20th

We report from behind a hill: we cannot seem to get around this slope, and the sun is setting too fast. We are giving up on it with every inch that goes dark. Down here, the humidity left over from these few days of rain is alive and well, still seeping into the ground.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, overcast with a variety of grey clouds, dark on light on dark, with bits of pale blue sky showing in between.

August 22nd

We report upon waking up late: it is nice that this is a cloudy day. We were not ready for the kind of brightness that we have been witnessing lately, and were in fact dreading the full force of the midday sun. Despite the overcast sky, the birds are doing a lot of chirping.

Digital painting of a starry night sky, with a gradient of blue and black hues. There are silhouettes of trees and power lines at the bottom of the frame.

August 23rd

We report: the stars came out easy in the night, with no moon to take over the sky. There is no traffic, no headlights to distract our eyes; our expert has brought their red torchlight. Within half an hour, we forget a world that is not the starry sky, and its timeless echoes.

Digital painting of a sunset sky: long, skinny clouds picking up pink and yellow sunlight, turning blue and purple while the sky behind is a gradient of pastel blue.

August 24th

We report in late light: late August, and we are losing the sun faster. If only for that reason, the nights are not quite as warm when the darkness lingers for longer. The ground is covered in leaves fallen too soon, and our steps lift dust off the path; the season is turning.

Digital painting of a pale blue sky full of cirrus: translucent, wispy clouds sweeping across the frame. In the middle, the sun, surrounded by two sun dogs, bright, iridescent, symmetrical spots. Above the sun, a faint U-shaped arc.

August 25th

We report: we ask our expert what is the name of the arc above the sun, and a few minutes later, they are talking about the shape of ice crystals and their orientation. Amidst all this, we manage to obtain the name: upper tangent arc. We look at the sun dogs through our fingers.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, a comma of dark grey against pale grey, with the dark silhouette of a bird flying there; waves on the underbelly of the clouds.

August 26th

We report one or two rain drops on the back of our hand, and certainly a handful more elsewhere that we have no evidence of. The clouds are still gathering, so nothing has started in earnest, but the horizon is a blur in the distance. We feel confident in what this entails.

Digital painting of a pre-dawn sky, dusk blue, covered in dark blue clouds with wispy edges, and a few lighter ones in the background.

August 27th

We report: the windows are streaked with early morning rain, drowning the clouds behind them. When we go out, a car almost immediately splashes us with gutter water, and we try very hard not to see it as a bad omen. It is not as cold as we had anticipated; the rain has stopped.

August 28th

We report at sundown: we saw the light change even as we were hearing rain on the rooftop, so we hurried out. It was not instantaneous; the rainbow appeared slowly, from left to right, and then it stayed for a long time, varying in its intensity. We watched it go, too.

Digital painting of some long, wispy cirrus in a bright blue sky, curling up at the end in the wind.

August 29th

We report: far off the coast, warm and cold fronts are spinning into one another in cyclogenesis. Somehow, as a result of the flapping of these large butterfly wings, mare’s tails are multiplying in the sky, wherever it is coldest. There are talks of precipitation on the wind.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky: a mammatus formation slipping to the side, dark grey pockets of clouds hanging from the sky.

August 30th

We report around noon, after most of the morning was occupied by series of showers. Our expert has been coming in and out of the rain, hopeful to get a good look at the side profile of the clouds; now, at last, the lull in weather is allowing mammatus to show.

Digital painting of a seascape before dawn, a cloudy, opaque sky of dark blue above an easy sea. There is a crow flying in the sky.

August 31st

We report: a lone crow is picking at crabs and seaweed on the beach before a flock of gulls makes its loud appearance. The gale comes to die on the shore, gentle waves that rattle the pebbles. It was much windier at sunset. It seems a long way til sunrise yet.

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