Three Types of Clouds
Science
I love weather. I love clouds. I like to be out in the weather. And I also like to know a little bit about what I'm looking at. The hail's coming inside the car. Okay, we gotta move. I wanna fall clouds for me. We're gonna get a tornado. So let's look at the three main cloud types and how they're used as kind of indicators for the weather. So we've got cumulus, stratus, and cirrus. Cumulus and stratus are low level clouds that's below 6500 feet. High level clouds are above 20,000 feet. First, cumulus. Cumulus. And when you're talking about cumulus clouds, these are the ones that you picture in your head as the white fluffy little cloud that you'd be painting in your picture. If you see them in their scattered and they have the flat bottoms and their fluffy white cotton tops, like Simpsons clouds, those are called fair-weather cumulus. And they indicate fair-weather, but you would typically think of as like good picnic weather. Yeah. Is there some cumulus up there? Cumulus means heat, like a pile in Latin. And that's because it gets heaped up. It builds vertically. So when you get this big column Ming billowing cloud, that's when things start to get exciting. So you're going to get your lightning and your thunder. It becomes a cumulonimbus cloud indicating that there's going to be some precipitation. But as a weather lover, it's exciting to see these things form. That hails. The next extra stratus. Stratus. Stratus are another low level cloud stratus means layer like a big blanket across the sky. And this is what you think of when you look up and you see kind of a gray day where you're just had this total cloud cover. Kind of dismal, one of the curl up with a good book kind of cloud. It could bring a little precipitation, little misting or none at all. I don't mean to judge, but it's kind of a dismal cloud. Now let's take a look at cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds. They're just wispy and pretty. They're a high level cloud, so they're above 20,000 feet. You know, steers means curl of the hair. That's why I'm touching my hair. It also means high, so these high, they're often described as wispy, little clouds. On their own, by themselves, sort of random, don't really mean anything. In general, cirrus clouds are going to indicate a change in the weather is about to happen. So, you know, that's something clouds are really cool. So they're the basics.