I was able to learn the basics of cloud identification with just a few hours of practice by studying things like altitude, size, and overall appearance, which we’ll cover in this section. Luckily, learning to identify these eight cloud types is surprisingly simple once you know what to look for. There are eight main types of clouds that everyone should know if you really want to get good at predicting the weather with observation. Eight Different Types of Clouds That Predict Weather Learning to identify clouds was a huge step on my personal journey to understanding weather patterns, so let’s look at this next. The next step is using these raw observations to classify and identify different types of clouds that help us predict the weather. Are there any dark spots or signs of active growth?Īs you practice observing the sky with these questions in mind, very quickly you’ll notice there are obvious differences between the size, quantity, color & altitude of clouds.Are you seeing low, medium, or high altitude clouds?.
You can practice identifying these patterns in clouds by stepping outside to observe the sky while asking some sorting questions like: So for starters, I’ve created this cloud video tutorial to show you some of the most important things you’ll need to observe:Īs you can see, reading the clouds is simply a matter of observing basic visual characteristics like the overall size, shape, and relative height of a cloud.
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The easiest method for learning how to read clouds is to have lots of real-life examples of what clouds look like in different weather patterns. So let’s go deeper and take some solid steps towards learning how to predict weather with clouds! How To Read Clouds
There are several different ways the transition from clear weather to storms can occur, so it’s important to know all the stages and how to identify the clouds you encounter as the weather changes. In actual practice, weather patterns take many days to evolve so you have to stay alert to what’s happening with the clouds over an ongoing period of time. While the basic rules for predicting weather with clouds are fairly simple, many people find this skill confusing because there are so many different types of clouds that all have their own nuances. Then as clouds begin to expand in size and develop dark spots or occupy multiple layers of the sky, these are indicators of stormy weather developing: Notice the upward expanding puffiness at the top of the cloud, indicating active growth. In general, when you see small, isolated clouds surrounded by a blue sky that lacks significant dark areas or signs of active growth, these are all indicators of fair weather ahead: Notice the small size and shallow, wispy appearance of this fair weather cumulus cloud To predict weather with clouds, you simply have to look at observable patterns like cloud size, cloud shape, altitude, vertical depth, and color shading within the cloud itself. So on my quest to learn ancient survival & awareness skills, I decided to investigate what clouds can tell us about the weather.
Before the invention of modern forecasting, humans knew how to predict weather by looking at clouds.