Frazz by Jef Mallett for May 17, 2020

Around here, the winter clouds are much more commonly a 90%+ overcast whereas the summer clouds are often “pretty”.

Why do we do it in the summer? Because you can’t lie back in the field in the snow or mud.

Winter clouds don’t break up into little familiar shapes.

Pareidolia (parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals, seeing shapes in clouds, or hearing hidden messages in reversed music.

It is a subset of apophenia (app-ə-FEE-nee-ə), the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena — such as finding significance in such random things as automobile license plate numbers, birthdates, and arrangements of fallen twigs — perhaps best exemplified by the film A Beautiful Mind.

Are we allowed to come out?

And there is your answer! Well done, Frazz.

It’s all in the perspective – and the weather

Warmer air causes greater stratification creating the pretty, puffy cumulus clouds. Sail plane pilots use the thermal currents to climb, clouds use them to billow upwards. Winter clouds tend to be flat stratus clouds.

For a Sunday comic about shapes in clouds, the clouds seem to be a bit of an afterthought in the art.

anyone REALLY from michigan sees NO resemblance to the skies of summer and winter in THAT state!

There’s a rather humdrum reason. Summer clouds are mostly cumuliform, with complex shapes. Winter clouds are mostly stratiform, and look — well — meh.

https://www.gocomics.com/lola/2020/05/17?ct=v&cti=880528