Pileus (Latin for "skullcap"), also called cap cloud, scarf cloudis is a small, smooth, thin cloud found attached to either a mountain top or growing cumulus tower.
Orographic clouds are clouds that develop in response to the forced lifting of air by the earth's topography (mountains for example).
The white streaks you see coming off high-flying jet airplanes are called contrails, which is short for condensation trail. Contrails are clouds that formed when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles that exist in aircraft exhaust. The water vapor comes from the air around the ...
Mammatus clouds are pouches of clouds that hang underneath the base of a cloud. They are usually seen with cumulonimbus clouds that produce very strong storms. Mammatus clouds are sometimes described as looking like a field of tennis balls or melons, or like female human breasts. In fact, the name ...
Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds look like breaking waves in the ocean. After wind blows up and over a barrier, like a mountain, the air continues flowing through the atmosphere in a pattern that looks like a wave. These clouds form when there is a difference in the wind speed or direction between two wind ...
Lenticular clouds form on the downwind side of mountains. Wind blows most types of clouds across the sky, but lenticular clouds seem to stay in one place. Air moves up and over a mountain, and at the point where the air goes past the mountaintop the lenticular cloud forms, and then the air ...
Cumulonimbus clouds belong to the Clouds with Vertical Growth group. They are generally known as thunderstorm clouds. A cumulonimbus cloud can grow up to 10km high. At this height, high winds will flatten the top of the cloud out into an anvil-like shape. Cumulonimbus clouds are associated with ...
Nimbostratus clouds belong to the Low Cloud (surface to 2000m up) group. They are dark gray with a ragged base. Nimbostratus clouds are associated with continuous rain or snow. Sometimes they cover the whole sky and you can't see the edges of the cloud.
