New Hampshire's state symbols are legion, but there may be room for one more.
Stunning clouds top Washington state's Mount Rainier at sunrise. (Courtesy Ryan Verwest.)
OK! Back to school time! Let’s see how you’d do on a pop quiz regarding our state symbols. We’ll start with an easy one: What’s the state bird? Purple finch, of course. State flower? Purple lilac. State tree: paper birch, right!
OK, now for a few harder but interesting ones: what’s the state animal? White tailed-deer, good. State insect? Hmm, a little harder. It’s the ladybug — not to be confused with our state butterfly, the Karner blue. State amphibian? Give up? It’s the red-spotted newt, which is usually depicted on official websites in its juvenile form of the red eft. Of course.
Now how about the state cloud? OK, that’s a trick question. We don’t have one. Yet. But North Country resident Dave Govatski believes that the Granite State should designate the “Altocumulus Lenticularis†as our state cloud.
Lenticular clouds, as they are also known, are “smooth, saucer shaped clouds that hang stationary in the sky for long periods.†They are very common at this time of year in the White Mountains and easy to identify since they aren’t puffy.
I like the fact that lenticular clouds are also a little edgy. Pilots, for example, avoid them since they tend to indicate turbulence. They’re considered high altitude clouds and often form at right-angles to the prevailing winds.
And while we're using political metaphors, nominating a state cloud would lock in New Hampshire “first in the nation†once again, since no other state has one.
