Types of Clouds and Weather [meteorology] [cratercrap]

[cratercracker]

Here is a description of 10 main cloud types, beggining with the low clouds!

This little guide includes:

-different types of clouds

-how to identify them

-what do they mean to the weather

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Sourse:

How to read the weather

Storm Dunlop

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1. Cumulus (Cu)

Cumulus clouds are the ''fair-weather'' clouds - those small fluffy heaps of snow that children usually draw. They form when the surface is heated by the sun and invisible bubbles of warm air start to rise from the surface.

Cumulus clouds have flat , slightly darker bases. The bases of a group of cumulus clouds will lie at the same height above the ground, and their rounded tops are roughly at the same level.

Cumulus clouds indicate that there will not be dramatic changes to the weather anytime soon.

2. Stratocumulus (Sc)

Stratocumulus clouds are a layer of cumulus-like clouds spread out into a layer of stratocumulus. There are always distinct breaks between them, but they might have considerable differences in their size. Stratocumulus is a very common type of clouds that forms over the ocean. 

It suggests that the weather is not changing rapidly.

Usually they can't bring any rain to speak of, and perhaps none at all. Instead Sc clouds can produce fine drizzle, light powdering of snow and fall of tiny ice crystals.

3. Stratus (St)

Stratus is a featurless cloud that usualy shrouds the ground- especially around high ground. (mountains, tall buildings and etc.)

To anyone within the cloud, the cloud appers as fog or mist.

They tend to form near coasts, wehn warm, humid rain cools the drop in the temperature overnight.

St clouds are similar to the stratocumulus cloud, they cannot produce and rain. but may give a rise to slight drizzle, or light snowfall.

4. Altocumulus (Ac)

Altocumulus is a middle layer cloud, similar to stratocumulus except Ac clouds are higher in the atmosphere. Unlike cirrocumulus, which is even higher, Ac clouds always show shading. 

Some species of Ac (that i will probably never describe) give important clues to the forthcoming thundery weather, but generally they do not indicate any immediate changes, but if they are gradually turning int altostratus they are indicative of major changes to come.

5. Altostratus (As)

Altostratus is a relatively featureless medium-level cloud. It is a good indicator of approaching persistent rain, particularly when it appears as increasing and thickening layer.

Altostratus itself rarely produces any rain that reaches the ground, but it precedes nimbostratus, which brings long-lasting rain that does.

6. Cirrus (Ci)

Cirrus, one of the high cloud types, has a distinctive structure, being composed of ice crystals. Although the crystals of ice reflect light so that at the day time they appear white and without shadows, occasionally Ci may be so dense that it appears a darker grey.

Cirrus usually shows a denser head and long trailing streamers of ice crystals, that are known as 'fallstreaks'. Fallstreaks can be hooked, curved, straight or appear quite random.

Bands of jet-stream cirrus are an important indicator of the approach and development of depression systems, and are the only way in which the jet streams are directly visible from the ground.

7. Cirrostratus (Cs)

Cirrostratus is a thin veil of ice crystal cloud. It usually appears as cirrus cloud spreads out across the sky. Initially cirrostratus is always very thin, and the sun and moon are visible through it. It is often accompanied by a halo (as in the picture above).

If a halo appears it will only be visible for a short period, dissapearing as the layer of cirrostratus becomes thicker.

If you see a thin almost colourless halo, it is almost always caused by the cirrostratus cloud.

8. Cirrocumulus (Cs)

Cirrocumulus is the last of three high clous. As the name suggests this is a layer of tiny cloudlets, again consisting of ice crystals, which if often difficult to distinguish from altocumulus.

Technically, it is defined by the size of the individual cloudlets, which are smaller than those of the altocumulus and they do not show any signs of shading.

It is relatively rare and does not show any particular signs of the forthcoming changes of weather.

9. Nimbostratus (Ns)

Nimbostratus is a deep, dark grey layer of clouds and is the main rain-bearing cloud in depressions in both summer and winter.

If altostratus lowers and thickens, and the rain starts to fall, the cloud has turned into nimbostratus. The rain will be more or less continous and may persist for many hours.

In winter, if the rain is falling into a layer of cloud below freezing, nimbostratus may produce long periods of snowfall.

10. Cumulonimbus (Cb)

The rain-bearing cloud, cumulonimbus, is related to cumulus and often begins in a similar fashion.

But instead of fluffy clouds, multiple individual cloud cells combine into one big cloud.

This cloud produces showers and forms thunderclouds. The clouds are very deep and often extend through the whole troposhpere/

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Thank you for reading! If you'd like to you can ask me some questions about those types of clouds! I

I think this thread would be helpful for modders that develop visual enhancement addons!

So, yeah, @blackrack, i think this will be somewhat useful for you, if not, sorry for disturbance .

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Also, here is a picture i took when i was going back to Moscow from London.

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Edited March 22, 2018 by cratercracker

[NSEP]

Cool! The sky above me is completely white right now . Stratocumulus is quite common in Western Europe (i think). 

I never really stood still and looked up into the clouds, thanks for making this thread, it made me a bit more interested in meteorology!

[Green Baron]

https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/home.html

[kerbiloid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

[Piatzin]

Wow, some of those are very stunning clouds

[MaxwellsDemon]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

You beat me to it.

During my recent reading on the Soviet/Russian space programs, noctilucent clouds are mentioned several times; they appear to have been an item of interest to the program scientists.   It sent me scurrying to the dictionary, because I'd never heard of them before!

[cratercracker]

Hi guys! 

What next topic would you like me to discuss?

1. Identifying rocks and minerals (I have a book for that)

(mineralogy)

2. Future of Earth (I have a book for that, but I hadn't read it yet.)

(biology)

3. Making contact (I don't have a book for that but, I can try my best to collect info from the internet)

(radio, codes, signs and etc)

[YNM]

39 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

1. Identifying rocks and minerals (I have a book for that)

(mineralogy)

If you can do soils I'd be interested. I want to know the "crap" geologist are having with soils (which are said to be near-meaningless to engineers - they'd just go with particle size gradation, water content, shear strength and angle of repose).

 

EDIT : Not angle of repose, but angle of internal friction (φ) and cohesion (c). Additionally, hydraulic conductivity and void ratio.

But I have to say that I didn't find them back when I read about soils "in the open".

Edited March 16, 2018 by YNM

[Green Baron]

Soil and geology ... soil is the dirt that's hiding the geology !

Soils are incredibly complicated due to their nature as outcome of weathering, sink and source of all kinds of circuits and heavy intermix with biology. Organics and micro- as well as macroscopic life form a good part of most soils. Soils depend on original rocks, climate, weathering processes, local weather, topography, animal activity, plant activity, fluid throughput, ... everything.

So, either geology, or soil, not both :-)

Edited March 16, 2018 by Green Baron

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

So, either geology, or soil, not both :-)

But the guys that release soil type maps are geologist or so right ? I don't find them in our dept. ?

[Green Baron]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

But the guys that release soil type maps are geologist or so right ? I don't find them in our dept. ?

More than one branch is involved, geography, hydrology, geology, chemistry, biology ...

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

More than one branch is involved, geography, hydrology, geology, chemistry, biology ...

So what, geotechnical engineering is a sorcery ?

 

I thought making transportation is easy...

Edited March 16, 2018 by YNM

[Green Baron]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

So what, geotechnical engineering is a wizardry ?

I don't understand what you mean. Soils were the point.

Here's official stuff, the (world reference for soil resources):

http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-survey/soil-classification/world-reference-base/en/

 

[YNM]

9 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I don't understand what you mean. Soils were the point.

Geotechnical Engineering is about making use of soils. Which is why I'm asking what are other branches learning off it in helping such. My lecturer says that "it's mostly useless, we all tests for ourselves" but perhaps we're missing new developments. There's a soil lab under the civil engineering dept. here, and I'm not aware of another yet.

I mean, let's say for rocks, geologist (or whoever, perhaps mineralogist ?) have a rather reliable source of what the density is going to be, what the hardness is, what the fracture stress is. I'm wondering whether the same could be said to soils.

Edited March 16, 2018 by YNM

[cratercracker]

 I think I would rather stick to the minerals. I don't have much (if I have something at all) about soil in my book.

 

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

 I think I would rather stick to the minerals.

It's fine, it's still interesting.

[Green Baron]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Geotechnical Engineering is about making use of soils.

Well, it is about making economic use of stuff in the earth. Drawing things out of soil is part of that. But engineering is usually not (so much) interested in how things form and come to being, but rather in how to get certain parts out of it. So, an engineer will walk out with a soil classification chart and see where it is best to build a plant or make a hole for mining, he isn't interested in how the soil formed. Sloppy spoken.

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Which is why I'm asking what are other branches learning off it in helping such.

Politics play role in soil classification as well, due to obvious reasons.

1 minute ago, YNM said:

I mean, let's say for rocks, geologist (or whoever, perhaps mineralogist ?) have a rather reliable source of what the density is going to be, what the hardness is, what the fracture stress is. I'm wondering whether the same could be said to soils.

Samesame, but different :-) Classifying a pebble is (depending on the kind of pebble) easier than a soil. Let's say, on a very abstract level, one would classify a rock as either volcanic, sedimentary or metamorphic. A soil needs more, even for a coarse addressing. Source rock (one of the above), evtl. way of transport, climate it formed in, organic and anorganic components, ... Sure, there are easy things like a loess, sand, sediments of a braided river, but that is rarely the case.

 

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

So, an engineer will walk out with a soil classification chart and see where it is best to build a plant or make a hole for mining ...

Even sometimes it's not enough, it been said.

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Politics play role in soil classification as well, due to obvious reasons.

Yeah, AASHTO and USDA have their own soil classifications.

 

@cratercracker Soils *could* be said as really tiny particles of minerals actually. For instance, clays can be categorized by the minerals inside it. So it's still interesting

[Green Baron]

13 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

 I think I would rather stick to the minerals. 

I begin. Minerals form rocks.

One of the easiest rocks would be for example a basalt. A volcanic rock, just solidified from lava. Basalts are comparably simple and straightforward, with a relatively low silica (~40%) and a high fieldspar portion (plagioclase mostly). They form ocean floors on earth, on other rocky planets they make for most of the surface.

Basalts (and other volcanic rocks) are sotosay at the beginning of the weathering process. At the end are sediments like clays. And, if you want, all kinds of soils.

[cratercracker]

I am still trying to make a thread about minerology

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, cratercracker said:

minerology

Kethane, Karbonite, Karborundrum, Ore (just the stock fuel ore), Bluthonium, Hydrium, and now - The Spice...

 

[Nightside]

On 3/16/2018 at 8:38 AM, YNM said:

Even sometimes it's not enough, it been said.

Yeah, AASHTO and USDA have their own soil classifications.

 

@cratercracker Soils *could* be said as really tiny particles of minerals actually. For instance, clays can be categorized by the minerals inside it. So it's still interesting

It is certainly possible to test for strength and other material properties of homogeneous soils - however a big part of the challenge of geotechnical engineering is extrapolating what is known about the soil in one, well tested location, across a large site or larger area such as a highway or utilities pipelines. 

I just graduated with a degree in civil engineering- if you have any geotechnical specific questions maybe ping me in a new thread and see if I learned anything useful.