Tag: cloud

How Fast Do Clouds Move?
Clouds can move at different speeds, typically between 20 and 40 miles per hour (32–64 km), but sometimes as slow as 1 mile per hour or as fast as 120 miles per hour. Many factors influence how fast clouds move. For instance, fluffy cumulus clouds can go up to 15 miles per hour, while wispy cirrus clouds can move along at over 100 miles per hour.
How Do You Find the Speed of Clouds?
To estimate a cloud’s speed, we need to know its size. You can do this by comparing how wide it looks from the bottom to how high it is. But there’s a trick to it. First, you have to guess how far you can see in the sky. If you’re down on the street, it’s like looking at a half-sphere with a radius of 2 to 3 miles. But if you’re up in a tall building, it’s a bit different.
Once you have an idea of how far you can see, you watch the cloud and time how long it takes to move across a certain part of the sky. This helps you figure out how fast it’s going. It can be tough to judge angles accurately, especially when things are really high or almost right above you. So, for certain clouds that are way up there, like cirrus clouds, you might have to adjust your estimate because they move a longer distance for the same angle change.
Types of Clouds by Their Movement Speed
(Omnisource5, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The average wind direction is where a cloud will move. Knowing the speed of the wind at a certain location and altitude will get you quite close to the cloud’s actual speed. Thus, the height and general shape of each kind of cloud determine its speed. Some types of clouds are listed below based on their speeds:
High-level:
- Cirrus clouds: Clouds that are 100% ice crystals are called cirrus clouds, and they move at rates of up to 100 miles per hour.
Mid-level:
- Altostratus clouds: These flat and uniform clouds in the mid-levels suggest a warm front is approaching, culminating in rain or snow. They can move at 50 miles per hour.
Low-level:
- Stratus clouds: They are low-lying clouds that are uniform in appearance and cover the sky entirely. They usually move at 20–30 miles per hour.
- Stratocumulus clouds: They are typically low and have a bumpy appearance, whether they form in patches or as a continuous sheet. These clouds tend to travel at speeds of 20 to 30 miles per hour.
Multi-level:
- Cumulus clouds: Clumpy cumulus clouds develop at any altitude and move at rates of 15 to 20 mph.
- Cumulonimbus clouds: Thunderstorms are sometimes born within these thick, dark clouds. A speed of up to 60 mph has been recorded for these clouds.
- Nimbostratus clouds: Continuous precipitation and speeds of 15 to 20 mph are typical for nimbostratus clouds.
— The reason wind causes clouds to travel more quickly
- Clouds consist of tiny water particles, like condensed droplets and ice, that remain suspended in the air due to their small size. The wind carries these particles, and their movement is directly related to wind speed.
What Determines How Fast Do Clouds Move?
Usually, clouds travel between 30 and 120 miles per hour (50 and 200 km per hour). However, the speed can change depending on what the clouds are made of and how fast the wind is blowing. For instance, storm clouds can move quickly, while fine, clear-weather clouds tend to move slowly.
- Altitude: At higher altitudes, clouds experience a variety of wind conditions. They move more swiftly at higher elevations because the winds are stronger there.
- Atmospheric Pressure: A change in atmospheric pressure could cause an air current to carry clouds along. Since high temperatures are the cause of low air pressure, winds are stronger in low-pressure areas close to high-pressure areas.
- Earth’s Spinning: Because of the Earth’s spinning, the direction and speed of the wind impact the movement and speed of clouds, even at high altitudes. However, since clouds grow inside the Earth’s atmosphere, the planet’s rotation has no direct effect on their speed.
- Air Currents: When the sun heats up the upper atmosphere, the air goes up, while the colder, heavier air near the planet’s surface comes down. The way the wind flows, like which way it goes and how fast, also affects how fast clouds move.
Since the wind carries clouds, stronger winds result in faster cloud movement.
Why Do Clouds Appear to Move at Different Speeds?
The air in a cloud determines how fast it moves; in jet streams, cloud speeds may exceed 185 miles per hour. The distance between us and the cloud also affects our sense of its speed. This optical illusion might make low cumulus clouds seem to move faster than high cirrus clouds. Clouds are nebulous and hard to gauge in distance, but clouds higher up in the sky tend to move faster than lower ones. Because the wind is usually stronger up there.
Wind, convection, and particle size all influence cloud particle movement. The wind determines their direction, with upper tropospheric clouds often moving faster. Convection and particle size affect the vertical movement of the clouds and their likelihood of speed. Different cloud types are associated with varying particle sizes.
The wind is often strongest in the upper troposphere.
Altitude affects wind speed through the “atmospheric pressure gradient”. As you ascend in the atmosphere, air pressure decreases, creating a pressure gradient that generates wind and makes clouds move faster. Greater pressure differences result in stronger winds as air moves from high-pressure to low-pressure areas.
How Far Do Clouds Travel?
Strong winds may carry clouds across continents, yet weaker winds can keep them in one location. Some types of clouds, when combined with the right conditions and winds, travel hundreds of miles away. Depending on the velocity of the wind, clouds can travel at speeds of 30 mph to 100 mph or even 250 mph!
The speed and direction of the wind can change a cloud’s movement, making it travel varying distances. Additionally, the size of a cloud can affect how far it goes. Smaller clouds tend to move quicker than bigger ones. On an ordinary day, a typical cloud might travel approximately 110 miles (180 km).
What really matters here is how high the cloud formed. When clouds form 12,000 feet up, they move at 25 miles per hour, but if they form at 5,000 feet, they go a bit slower, at 18 miles per hour.
— But how long do clouds stay in the air?
- Commonly seen fluffy cumulus clouds usually stick around for about 15 minutes to a couple of hours. Stratus clouds, on the other hand, can hang around for days. The distance these clouds travel depends on their type. The amount of moisture in the air also plays a role in how long a cloud lasts. When it’s not very humid, the liquid air molecules disappear quickly, and the cloud doesn’t last as long.
How Does Temperature Affect Cloud Speed?
Clouds’ ability to develop and their chemical make-up are both influenced by the ambient air temperature. Clouds are made up of many water droplets, ice crystals, or sometimes both. They may float for a long period in the air because of their small size and high air resistance, especially if they stay in rising air currents.
In undisturbed air, a typical small cloud droplet falls at a consistent speed of approximately 0.50 inches per second (equivalent to roughly 1.3 cm). These droplets are so incredibly small that they can remain in liquid form even when the temperature drops as low as -22°F (-30°C). When this occurs, we refer to them as supercooled droplets.
The way air molecules move depends on how hot or cold it is around them, and this, in turn, affects how the wind blows, how strong it is, and where it’s headed. How quickly they move depends on how fast the wind is blowing.
Radiation is primarily responsible for determining the temperature of molecular clouds. How fast these clouds rotate depends on the difference in temperature between their lowest and highest parts. When there’s a big temperature difference, it creates a strong pressure difference, which in turn makes the winds stronger and the clouds move faster.
How Does Humidity Affect the Speed of Clouds?
Clouds can’t form without enough humidity. Water vapor in supersaturated air tries to find cooler places to condense. The first is the gradual growth in size and volume of cloud droplets as water vapor continues to condense into them. If the air is saturated, fog will form near the ground, while clouds will form in the atmosphere.
There is a relationship between cloud speed and cloud humidity. Higher humidity levels can lead to slower cloud movement, as moist air is less dense and offers less resistance to the traveling clouds. Conversely, lower humidity levels tend to result in faster cloud movement, as drier air is denser and can more readily push clouds along.
How Do Clouds Move?
The movement of clouds and their subsequent speed is a result of the air currents in the atmosphere. These elements affect how the clouds move:
Wind: Wind drives cloud movement across the atmosphere, from ground level to high altitudes, even beyond jumbo jet flight limits. While there may be no wind at ground level, when you gaze higher up, you can still see clouds moving from the wind.
Air currents: Air currents have a significant impact on the movement of clouds. Clouds are formed as air rises and expands, causing it to cool. As their buoyancy rises in comparison to the surrounding air, the cloud can rise even higher. These packets can be seen rising steadily in cumulus clouds.
Weather patterns: Clouds’ directions and speeds vary depending on weather conditions, such as high- or low-pressure systems that direct the wind and the clouds.
Type of cloud: Some clouds, like the cumulus, are stationary and associated with pleasant weather, while others, like the cirrus, are flimsy and may move greater distances.
The Most Common Clouds
- Cirrocumulus
- Cirrostratus
- Cirrus
- Cumulonimbus
- Cumulus
- Nimbostratus
- Stratocumulus
- Stratus
References
Air & Water | Understanding Climate – Ocean Surface Topography from Space (nasa.gov)
CLOUD DEVELOPMENT (weather.gov)
Clouds and How They Form | Center for Science Education (ucar.edu)
September 20, 2023
Why Is the Sky White in the Winter?
The cooler air and lower humidity in winter contribute to the sky’s purportedly whiter appearance compared to other seasons. Clouds are made up of small ice crystals, which develop when the moisture in the air freezes. The sky seems white in winter because the ice crystals reflect light in all directions. In contrast, since the air is warmer and more humid in the summer, it is the water droplets rather than the ice crystals that produce the clouds. The sky seems bluer in summer since these water droplets scatter light in a manner distinct from that of ice crystals.
White Sky: The Essential Aspects
- When it’s very chilly outside, the sky might seem white instead of the typical summertime blue.
- There is a simple scientific explanation for the blue sky and the evening glow.
- One reason for this is because, despite its white appearance, sunlight really contains a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. The colors of a rainbow are an illustration of how they may be seen by humans.
- Yet, there is still a chance of being deceived; not all strange phenomena in the sky can be explained physically. Some colors we see in the sky could be the consequence of our own imaginations, just like a low full Moon is not actually bigger than the usual Moon.
A color prism. (Credit: Lucas Vieira)
Using a prism, you can see that white light is really made up of many different colors (wavelengths). A white beam of light passing through a piece of triangular glass will emerge from the other side in a variety of hues. After seeing how amazing the effect was, Pink Floyd decided to use it as the central theme for their classic album, “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
It’s not the season, but rather the amount of moisture in the air that determines whether or not the sky looks bluer or whiter.
Why Does the Sky Seem Whiter in the Winter?
There is no significant difference in the sky’s color in the summer and winter. The winter sky is just as blue as the summer one (including the white skies in summer). However, some days, even in apparently clear weather, the sky might look “whiter” than others due to certain circumstances. This effect is mostly determined by the humidity, or how foggy the air is.
High fog is more common in the fall and winter than in the summer because of the increased humidity. The sky appears white because of light diffraction from the tiny water droplets. In the winter, when the sun takes longer to burn off dense fog, the color effect may last into the day.
The effect of light diffraction sets the color of the sky.
It’s the same with aerosols. Dust and soot are two common examples of such minute airborne particles. The sky seems whiter in the winter because of the increased concentration of aerosols caused by increased heating.
But, without clouds or fog, the winter sky can still look brighter and whiter: After entering Earth’s atmosphere, the blue portion of the sun’s rays disperses in all directions. In a normal world, this would make the sky above you seem brilliant blue. But the winter provides a longer route for the sunrays through the atmosphere since the sun is lower. The blue light is so diffused that it can hardly reach your eyes and the sky appears whiter.
The area close to the horizon especially turns brighter than the remaining parts of the sky, creating a similar white impression. The sun’s rays coming in from the horizon are dispersed so many times by the air molecules that the resulting spectrum is (nearly) white. Overall, the sky will be whiter because of the various wavelengths of light mixing together to form white. This impact, however, is not seasonal, occurring both in the winter and the summer.
In the winter, when there is a lot of snow, some of the sunlight will be reflected back into the sky. This also adds to the effect.
Why Is the Sky Blue?
Sunlight has a wide variety of colors. From red to blue, that’s where you’ll find the visible light spectrum. When all combined, it’s just white. When this spectrum of light reaches Earth’s atmosphere, the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, as well as the water droplets and dust particles, deflect (or “diffract”) some of the light.
In this mechanism, blue light is dispersed in all directions to a considerably greater extent than red light. The atmosphere (the “sky”) appears blue because of this scattering effect, regardless of your point of view. The air itself acts as a “carrier” for the color, but in reality, it is just the reflected blue light that hits your eye.
The Impact of Altitude on Sky Color
(Image: Freepik)
At noon, the sun travels a relatively short distance through the air envelope before reaching the border with space, which is just 60 miles (100 km) away. The sun appears yellow on Earth because only a small fraction of the blue light it emits can get through the atmosphere. At higher altitudes, the filtering effect is lowered. Therefore, the sky seems slightly whiter to those flying at an altitude of 6 miles (10 km) than it does to those on the ground.
Rayleigh Radiation
The sky color and Rayleigh scattering (Credit: Gsu.edu)
This intriguing phenomenon, named after its discoverer, Baron Rayleigh, determines the degree to which the light is dispersed. An intense deflection occurs when a particle is smaller than the wavelength of the incident light. This implies that the atmosphere scatters sunlight’s shorter-wavelength blue rays around four times more powerfully than its longer-wavelength red rays.
Why Does the Sky Become Red During Sunset?
The problem with sunset is that light has to travel through the atmosphere for 40 times longer at night than it does during the day, especially when the sun is at its optimal position just above the equator.
As during the day, the blue light is still scattered during sunsets. But the blue light from sunlight is nearly entirely filtered away during sunset as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere, so the sky is no longer illuminated by it.
In addition, ozone (O3) and water molecules in the upper atmosphere absorb part of the blue wavelengths.
Sunsets on the beach are nearly entirely composed of the long-wave red light that penetrates the atmosphere due to the position of the sun in the sky.
The sun’s rays are not only weaker in the evening, but they also no longer include any short-wave UV radiation, which is why sunburns are no longer common.
When additional particles, such as ash from a volcanic eruption, dust from a sandstorm, smoke from forest fires, and, sadly, fine dust from air pollution, are also floating in the air, the sky may become a spectacular crimson in turn.
The Sky in Space
No matter how high the Earth is in the sky, the sky on the Moon will always be completely dark. Even though the Moon looks to be encased in a blue sky here on Earth during the day, the space doesn’t light blue. There are no particles in a vacuum to reflect light of any color, hence, a vacuum cannot emit any colors. Transparency permeates all of space. It’s dark everywhere else in the universe except for the stars, which shine in a rainbow of colors based on their composition.
References
David K. Lynch; William Charles Livingston (2001). Color and light in nature. Cambridge University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-521-77504-5.
Gibbs, Philip (May 1997). “Why is the sky Blue?” Usenet Physics FAQ.
Craig F. Bohren & Eugene Edmund Clothiaux (2006). Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation: An Introduction with 400 Problems.
December 13, 2022
How Lightning Actually Occurs During a Thunderstorm
November 23, 2022
Most Useful Clouds to Predict the Weather
Humans have been able to accurately forecast the weather by studying natural patterns for thousands of years. Clouds, in particular, may provide useful information about the near-term weather. Where do you think the day’s weather will stand? Take a look at the sky and make your own forecast.
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Listed below are five different classes of clouds, each with its own significance.
The Formation of the Clouds
The accuracy of weather predictions has risen dramatically in recent decades. However, mankind has been able to foretell the weather down to the hour by studying cloud patterns for thousands of years. Clouds, depending on their make-up, might be white, gray, thick, or thin.
The transformation of water vapor into a liquid state results in the formation of clouds.
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Clouds are formed when warm air that is already saturated with water cools, causing some of the water to condense into droplets. When air travels upward, it cools down because of the decrease in temperature.
Clouds are made up of tiny droplets of water or ice crystals suspended in the air. It’s clear that these particles are always in transit. According to scientists, a 1 km³ cumulus cloud may weigh up to 1,000,000 tons.
Cumulus
Hazy clouds are called cumulus clouds
Hazy clouds are called cumulus clouds. Image: GoldenMedows,, CC BY-SA 3.0
These clouds have the distinct appearance of cotton due to their smooth surfaces. Both of their flat bases are on the same horizontal plane. With the sun shining on them, they take on a dazzlingly white color. Not only do they not foretell an impending rain, but they are also not even somewhat interesting.
Scientists classify cumulus clouds into three categories:
- Cumulus humilis, which is broad and short in height;
- Cumulus mediocris, which has a moderate height but few protuberances;
- Cumulus congestus, which is tall and bushy. This is the last phase of cumulus development preceding the formation of cumulonimbus.
Cumulonimbus
Thunderstorms can be brought on by the Cumulonimbus cloud
Cumulonimbus incus.
It shouldn’t rain as long as the cumulus clouds stay tiny, but if they keep getting bigger and higher in the sky, that’s a terrible omen.
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Storm clouds that are capable of producing hail are called cumulonimbus.
Cirrus
High in the sky, cirrus clouds float about
High in the sky, cirrus clouds float about. Image: Cirrus clouds2, CC BY-SA 3.0
Very high in the atmosphere, between 3.5 and 7 miles (6 and 12 kilometers), cirrus forms as thin, white threads. The arrival of a warm front that might bring rain within 12 hours is signaled by cirrus clouds that get lower and thicker as time passes.
Stratus
These stratus clouds, like the Stratus nebulosus, are low and gray
These stratus clouds, like the Stratus nebulosus, are low and gray.
Grey stratus clouds often hover fewer than 1650 feet (500 meters) above the earth. Hilltops and high-rises are readily hidden from view. Stratus clouds are a continuous blanket that might provide a little rain. If they make it to the ground, they’ll be like a dense fog.
Lenticular clouds
Lenticular clouds are often observed near peaks
Lenticular clouds are often observed near peaks, such as here in Japan near the Mount Fuji.
A lenticular cloud’s shape has nothing to do with the weather’s trajectory. Their distinctive form recalls a lens or possibly a UFO. You may often see these clouds in the vicinity of mountain peaks. They owe their form to the presence of wind at high altitudes.
November 10, 2022
Cloudless Rain: How Come It Sometimes Rains With Clear Sky and No Clouds?
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