Skip to main content

Cumulus Clouds



Cumulus is the Latin word for pile or heap, and cumulus clouds certainly fit their name! They look like fluffy mounds of whipped cream floating in the sky, and often have a shape similar to that of a cauliflower.

 Cumulus clouds form when relatively warm, moist air rises and cools below the dew point. The moisture in it then condenses into tiny water droplets, which form the cloud. The relative humidity (how "full" the air is with water) helps determine the height at which the moisture condenses at, which is the base of the cloud.
In this little video I made, you can see how the clouds form, with the moist air appearing a light mist rising out of the ground. The moist air is not visible in reality, but I added it to help illustrate the idea:


A cumulus cloud constantly undergoes change, as long as moist air continues to rise under it. The water droplets at the edge of the cloud usually evaporate, so the cloud loses water as it gains it. In a time-lapse, the clouds appear to boil.

Here are the main types of cumulus clouds:

Cumulus Humilis

Cumulus humilis clouds are small things with little vertical development. They indicate that the temperature of the atmosphere in the area does not drop very much with altitude, if at all. When seen in the morning, they signify an unstable atmosphere, possibly resulting in thunderstorms.
These clouds are the most likely type of cumulus cloud to be seen during Winter.

Cumulus Mediocris

Cumulus mediocris has a greater vertical development than that of cumulus humilis, but is not as large as cumulus congestus. When these clouds are seen in the morning or early afternoon, they often indicate storms later in the day.

Cumulus Congestus

Also known as towering cumulus, cumulus congestus are tall, towering clouds that often precipitate (rain, hail, etc.). They are similar to cumulus mediocris, but are a lot larger and taller. They often develop from cumulus mediocris clouds, but may develop from other types of clouds as well. If this type of cloud continues developing, it can become a cumulonimbus cloud. The one in the picture above became a small one within a few minutes.

New posts every month - subscribe for free!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Major Change of Ideas

Edit: April Fool's. The article completely fails to answer for the benefits of math and science (including medicine and natural disaster prediction). It grossly exaggerates the negative aspects of math and science. Incidentally, math and science have made a large positive difference in my life. Good morning, everybody! I decided to write a blog post to say that I will be completely changing the way I view knowledge and the purpose of life. Photo credit: my sister Basically, "higher" knowledge (including logic, science, mathematics, etc.) is completely useless. There is no point in learning these subjects, which is why I have dropped all my college classes and will not be going to school today. Instead, we should go to the fields, with a shovel and a rake, and grow crops. I will therefore end my blog and begin life as a worker at a ranch in Wyoming. Why this sudden change, you might ask? A few days after my last post (which nobody seemed to read), I came upon a realizatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

5 Methods for Approximating Pi

Happy super-π day! π-day falls on March 14 every year, because the month-day combination results in 3-14, which are the first 3 digits of π. But this π-day is particularly special: include the year, and you get 3-14-15, the first 5 digits of π. We won't get another π-day like this for another 100 years, so you better enjoy this one! A particularly special time will be at 9:26:53 PM tonight, when we'll get 3-14-15 9:26:53, or the first 10 digits of π. In honor of the occasion, I'm going to post 5 simple methods for approximating the value of π. 1. String and Tape Measure Draw a circle with a diameter of 1 foot and put a piece of string around the edge. Cut the string until it's the right length, and then measure it with a tape measure. The string should be about π feet long. This can be implemented more accurately using a computer program: take the arc length of √ (1 - x 2 ) on the interval (-1, 1). The result should be π. var pi = 0; var step = 0.0001; var previous = 0...
Post a Comment
Read more

2014 in Photos

The year of 2014 is over; the year of 2015 has begun. Over the past year, I took a lot of pictures - more than 1200 photos of clouds, bugs, plants, rocks, and more. I deleted most of the low-quality and repetitive photos. Then, I selected 20 of the remaining photos which I thought were the most interesting or significant. In this post, I'll include those photos, in chronological order. Spring 1. Cold Hummingbird I took this photo after a late snowstorm in Spring. In the days leading up to the storm, it was warm and sunny and the fields were green, so the snow came rather unexpectedly. During the storm, one of the hummingbirds at our feeder was covered in ice and could barely fly. This hummingbird was more fortunate, but unlucky nevertheless. 2. Green Landscape I took this photo on the side of a biking trail. I didn't edit or crop the photo - this is how it looked. 3. Indian Paintbrush The Indian Paintbrush is an unusual flower. What appear to be flower petals are actually brigh...
Post a Comment
Read more