It’s finally gotten to the point where I can lay out on the grass and stare at the sky without the risk of being covered in snow. Let’s celebrate with the game show craze that’s not exactly sweeping the nation… Name That Cloud! You’ve probably heard the cloud names before, but if you’re like me, you couldn’t accurately match them up with the real thing. (unless you’re thinking of names like “puffy” and “dark”)
Clouds are classified based on their height and structure.
Clouds below 2000 meters are called stratus.The word comes from Latin for “spread out”. The two types of cloud in this category are nimbostratus and stratocumulus. To my untrained eye, there’s not a big difference between the two, but the stratocumulus should be more lumpy and uneven. Both tend to result in those dreary grey days where it’s trying to rain but not particularly succeeding. Sometimes stratus clouds get low enough to touch… what we call fog.
Above 6000 meters are the cirrus clouds. Cirrus in Latin translates to “curl of hair”. These are the wispy clouds that are just thin lines across an otherwise blue sky. Cirrostratus (high-level, spread out) clouds are nearly invisible, as they are a sparse collection of ice crystals that stretch across wide areas. They sometimes hint at their existence by creating a halo effect around the sun or moon.
Between those two levels, clouds get dubbed “alto”. Either altrostratus or altocumulus. Altostratus (remember “spread out”) is what we call overcast. It’s a light grey covers that dulls the sun, but rarely makes for any rain. Filmmakers love this! Altocumulus clouds show up like ripples across the sky, not unlike the sandy bottom of a lake, and may foretell a coming thunderstorm.
Cumulus clouds, named from Latin for “pile up” (like accumulate), are the stereotypical fluffy cotton-ball clouds. They come and go with a lifespan of 5 to 40 minutes. Everybody loves cumulus clouds. But you do have to watch out for the evil Dr. Jekyll version called cumulonimbus. These are the gigantic, huge, towering clouds that bring powerful storms.
This all should make perfect sense… if you can speak Latin. For the rest of us, here’s the quick memonic guide to souding really smart about clouds.
Spread-out… straddling the sky… Stratus
Fluffy… piled-up… accumulated… Cumulus
Wispy… seriously thin… Cirrus (okay, that one’s a stretch, I admit)
And for those of you who can’t get enough cloud facts, many months ago I wrote a article to calculate how much a cloud weighs. (hint: it’s seriously heavy!)
- Source: Cloud classifications from the University of Illinois
