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ARE THOSE STRANGE CLOUDS BLOGGER HYPE AND PHOTO-SHOPPED OR SIGNS OF OUR SHIFTING TIME?

Okay: signs of the times.

Can we start with the "Year Without Winter" (at least in North America)?

(Also maybe Spring: are we headed right to summer?)

It has been truly remarkable, to visit a place like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and hear folks talk about how difficult it has been to snowboard (for the simple reason that there has been so little snow).

We hear this from Upstate New York and elsewhere.

In other parts of the world, such as Russia, and Europe, the winter was a particularly brutal one, confirming what we have long mentioned: we're in a time of not just one trend but extremes. Isn't it baffling how few recognize the (growing) significance?

The sun is issuing forth flares. Asteroids are detected closer and closer. Volcanoes rumble. We just celebrated the anniversary of the horrible Japanese tsunami. A rare tornado hits Hawaii -- while other twisters already threaten to make this a record year (see: Indiana). Let us simply acknowledge the truth. Five of the warmest winters on record in the United States have now occurred since 1998, and there is no need to politicize this (which on both sides obfuscate.)

Intensity will increase by a magnitude. We are nearly at the end of the "precursor" stage.  The events have been forewarnings. Those who offer a precise time frame are in error.  So are those with exact prognostications.

We can expect the unexpected.

It will make sense -- it will be something we thought would occur -- only in retrospect.

It is interesting, what is being reported with clouds -- not just the seeming holy images in them that we have long mulled (in an attempt to discern) but actual clouds themselves. There have been towering clouds. There have been clouds that look like nuclear mushrooms. There have been clouds to form stark contrast during wildfires out West. There were unusual "tsunami clouds" in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle [above left and below]. There are lenticular clouds. Clouds figured into many important biblical events. Elijah saw an unusual cloud as a prophetic prefigurement. God was in a cloud from the mountain, to Moses and the Israelites. "It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud," said Genesis 9:14. "So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled," said Exodus 19:16 (reminding us too of unusual resounding sounds)." Solomon said, “The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick cloud" (2 Chronicles 6:1).

Our question of the day: if clouds were signs in biblical times, why might they not be signs now?

As we always point out (in trying to refine discernment), what seems unusual may be another manifestation of signs of the climate shift or simply something that has always occurred but went unreported in the years before the internet. We will wait and watch.

[Please send us any of your unusual cloud photographs.]

"And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory," says Matthew 24:30.

The same is so true about digitalized photographs -- which seem to have far more unusual lights than the older film and videotape.

The question is whether modern technology engulfs more of reality (including unseen spiritual realities) or simply allows for more glares and refractions.

A recent sensation in blogs was the photograph of a Mayan pyramid with what seemed like a ray of light coming straight down through it from a dark cloud (particularly interesting to many who subscribe to a Mayan propehcy for the year 2012 of momentous, era-ending events).

No question about one thing: pyramids have strange (and not necessarily holy) energy around them. We've encountered this both in Egypt (where a strong wind erupted at the very start, in Gizeh, of prayers) to Mexico (where a strange disorientation descended during a visit to the pyramid of Teotihuacán (known historically for blood sacrifice).

From the UK are reports of "clouds, whipped into fantastical shapes, hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm. But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognized with a name. They have been seen all over Britain in different forms -- from Snowdonia to the Scottish Highlands -- and in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, but usually break up without producing a storm," says The Mail. "And some experts believe the stormy weather phenomenon deserves its very own classification. Experts at the Royal Meteorological Society are now attempting to make it official by naming it 'Asperatus' after the Latin word for 'rough'. If they are successful, it would be the first variety of cloud formation to be given a new label in over half a century."

Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell which are real and which have been "photo-shopped." Clearly, some are not.

Are they another "sign"? Might they be an effect of the gyrations in climate?

The answers to both remains for your own reckoning.