A cloudspotter is a person who watches clouds in all types of weather and learns to enjoy the amazing variety of clouds in the skies. Would you like to become a cloudspotter? Have you ever just lazed around outside on a sunny days watching clouds and playing the cloud likeness game? That cloud looks like a lamb. That one looks like a kernel of popcorn. You know the game?
The first thing to do is to find a book with pictures of different types of clouds. An encyclopedia or a weather book from the public library will show pictures of the ten common cloud types. There are many other cloud forms but these you will learn as your study of clouds progresses.
Any season of the year is a good time to study clouds. Even in wintertime when you are stuck inside, you can watch clouds and study clouds from a good window. Besides a book about clouds you will enjoy having a camera to take cloud pictures and a sketch book to sketch clouds into.
The Altitude of Clouds
The most common clouds are grouped according to their altitude.
- The highest clouds form above 16, 500 feet and above to the tropopause. These are cirrus clouds and include cirrostratus, cirrocumulus, and cirrus.
- Mid-level clouds between 6,500 and 16,500 feet high and include altostratus and altocumulus
- The lowest clouds, clouds that form below 6,500 feet are called stratus, cumulus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, and cumulonimbus.
Clouds are further distinguished by Latin terms which describe their sizes or shapes, such as humilis meaning humble or small, congestus, meaning swelling or developing, fibratus, fibrous, forming in strands, or lenticularis, or lens-shaped.
Clouds form when moisture evaporates from the ground and rises. The moisture drifts along and rises and as it absorbs more moisture it becomes heavier and fuller until changes of heat and cold and wind cause the moisture to form precipitation and in that form to drop to the surface.
These are Clouds
You can make your own cloud on a cold day. Your breath is warm and when you breathe into the cold air outside a cloud forms.
The heat from a jet engine blowing out into the cold sky causes a cloud. Cloud spotters call them contrails.
Fog is a cloud you can feel with your hands and face. Fog is a cloud that is resting along the surface of the ground. You can walk through that cloud.
The Cloud Mind Trick
Try lying on the ground and looking up at the clouds on a sunny day when there are lots of puffy white clouds drifting along. Look straight up and try pretending that you are looking down as if suspended above the clouds. You are looking at the bottoms of the clouds but pretending you are above them looking down.
Clouds and the Forecast
Watching clouds and studying them can give you information to use in judging what weather to expect. The puffy white cumulus clouds are a predictor of sunny weather. The heavy flat dark clouds – stratus – foretell rain. Cirrus clouds swirling high in the sky say cold temperatures and possibility of snow to come.
Study clouds at all times of day. A cumulus cloud only lasts twenty minutes at the longest and much less sometimes. A cloud is always changing and changing fast. What can you decipher about the weather by watching what clouds are doing? Building up? Thunderstorms may be heading in. Blowing fast scudding across the sky hanging low – expect rain and cooler temperatures.
The clouds moving show us which direction the wind is blowing and what kind of weather to expect. Clouds are predictors of the weather to come.
Cloud spotters have a fascinating world of clouds above to study and watch. The variety and movement are endless. Watching clouds and learning their patterns and names is a great occupation during all sorts of weather.
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