Whimsy in the skies

When Buncha Thanaboonsombut travels by air, he always insists on a window seat at the check-in desk and spends the entire flight taking photos through the window.

But while he’s always looking up at the sky, he is not, like many of us, trying to judge when and if it is going to rain. A man with his roots firmly planted in nature, his upward gaze aims to seek out and identify those visible masses of liquids known as clouds. 

A dedicated practitioner of nephelococcygia, as cloud gazing is known, Buncha is the founder of the popular “Cloud Lover Club” page on Facebook and shares his hobby with some 12,000 active cloud watchers here in Thailand.

A scientist attached to the Science and Technology Ministry’s National Science and Technology Development Agency and a regular newspaper columnist, Buncha’s face recently become familiar to millions of small screen viewers when he appeared on a TV programme to explain how a honeymooning couple had been killed by a lightning strike while on holiday in the Grand Canyon.

“I’ve been attracted by clouds since I was a child studying English,” says the affable scientist. “I remember looking up a word in a dictionary and coming across ‘waterspout’. I read the definition then went on to try and find out more about this natural phenomenon, which is actually a tornado above the water.”

He earned his primary degree in physics at Chulalongkorn before heading to the US for his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in material sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

His main assignments for the agency are related to material sciences, a discipline that broadly encompasses the fundamental study of solid matter with the goal of engineering new materials with superior properties. He’s also helped to set up an internal magazine that focuses on pure science and technology. A frequent speaker at seminars, his writing career kicked off when he was approached by some senior officials from the Nation Group editors to pen a piece for Krungthep Turakij, The Nation’s Thai-language sister publication. 

“That was my introduction to the world of mass media and I found that I enjoyed writing,” he says. His first article for Krungthep Turakij was about the nature of thunder, rain clouds and downpours and Buncha recalls how his background research drew him deeper into the cause and effects of these natural elements. “I also discovered how few books were available on the science of clouds and among those I did find, almost all of them were in English. That inspired me to write more about clouds and skies for public consumption.”

Buncha’s articles quickly attracted a following among readers up to then convinced that science was too difficult for them to understand. 

He initially uploaded his articles to the gotoknow.org website and received favourable reviews. He wasn’t however prepared for the response he received when he invited readers to send in photos of clouds and skies for uploading to the web and was almost overwhelmed by the more than 500 images that flowed in.

Three years ago, he was introduced to Facebook and the Cloud Lover Club or Chomrom Kon Rak Muanmek, was born.

“We, as the administrators of the Facebook page, could never had anticipated that Thailand had so many cloud lovers,” he laughs, adding that they were thrilled when the number of members topped the 1,000 mark. “Today, we have nearly 12,000 members.”

Most club members and Facebook friends are true cloud lovers. Many don’t know the scientific names of the clouds but instead compare them to a variety of shapes, including cats, giants and famous cartoon characters. “I always urge our members to name the clouds,” he says.

His followers come from all walks of life and their ages vary from the very young to the elderly. The online club has few rules though members posting photos are encouraged to give details of place and time the images were taken and whether they were snapped with a camera or a smart phone. Buncha says there have been issues with certain members who have copied the photos of others and pretended to have snapped them themselves.

“In such cases, I send them a personal message to let them know that they cannot do that. Those members also face social sanctions from other members,” he says.

He is grateful to the founders of Facebook for dreaming up a network that’s capable of bringing together all those who admire the same things. His page has done so well, he says, because virtually everybody today is equipped with a camera phone allowing them to snap every interesting cloud form they see to post on the their webpage.

Buncha is also full of admiration for His Majesty the King’s cloud-seeding project, describing the King as a polymath, as his expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. 

“I looked into the cloud-seeding project of the King and discovered that not only does he have a complete understanding of how it works but he can also simplify the complicated information so that other people can understand it too,” he says.