Some useful information: eyeamflesch

eyeamflesch

Some useful information

Sep 14, 2003 14:56

BOM-cloud quiz

More about Mr
McCloud

Mr McCloud shows
the four primary cloud groups - cirrus
(wispy, hair-like), strata (layers,
sheet-like), cumulus (puffy, heaped)
and nimbus (rain cloud).

He has a
cumulonimbus body with a thunderhead (he's a bit of a dunderhead and going
a bit troppo - his bald patch is pushing through the
tropopause).

He has cirrus
cloud for hair and ice crystal dandruff. His feet are made from strata
cloud. One leg is a tornado and the other is a heavy down pour of rain
(microburst).

He carries a
lightning walking stick that he uses to herd and scare people with and
lives in a cloud environment, with a cloud house and cloud car etc. He has
a cloud farm with a herd of fluffy cloud sheep.

Cloud
Classification

Clouds have names that come from Latin (an
ancient Roman language). An English naturalist Luke Howard, in 1803,
developed a classification system based on the following four main cloud
types:

Cumulus -
Latin for 'heap', to describe a puffy cloud
Cirrus -
Latin for 'curl of hair', to describe a wispy cloud
Stratus -
Latin for 'layer', to describe a sheet-like cloud
Nimbus -
Latin for 'violent rain', to describe a rain cloud.

Other clouds could be
described by combining the basic types. For example, nimbostratus is a
rain cloud that occurs in layers, whereas cumulonimbus is a rain cloud
with pronounced vertical development.

Cirrostratus is cirrus
occurring as a sheet-like cloud, and stratocumulus is a layer cloud with
some cumulus features.

There are ten principal cloud
forms which are divided into four primary cloud groups:

High clouds - cirrus, cirrostratus, cirrocumulus
Middle
clouds - altostratus, altocumulus
Low
clouds - nimbostratus, stratocumulus,
stratus
Clouds with vertical
development - cumulus,
cumulonimbus.