I know that we all love cloud gazing - I certainly do, especially when we are about to enter a huge storm. I've seen a couple of interesting clouds trough my lifetime, though not one of them were anywhere near the ones I'm going to show you.
1. Lenticular clouds
These are pretty rare cloud formations. They form around mountains, when moist air rapidly cools down in an elevation. They are often referred to as "UFOs" because of their shape. There are also different types of lenticular clouds, like arcs and layers, and ribbons and rolls and blankets. Check them out:
2. Mammatus clouds
If you see these, it would be better to head inside the house, since these usually precede huge storms.
3. Asperatus
This type of cloud is so rare that it doesn't even have a classification. They usually appear in New Zealand.
4. Roll and other Arcus clouds
Roll clouds are a variety of Arcus clouds, which are a type of clouds that are totally detached from other cloud bodies around them, and they look like they are rolling in the sky (thus, the name). These kind of clouds usually appear in coastal areas, because the circulation of the sea winds create them.
5. Shelf clouds
These are similar to roll clouds, but they remain attached to the cloud formation. They are also a sign for really bad thunderstorms.
6. Nacreous clouds
These kind of clouds are again really rare. They form in cold areas, like Antarctica, and they are really, really high.
7. Cumulonimbus
When you see a cumulonimbus, it always means that storms... heavy storms are coming. They are also extremely big clouds, they can reach up to 23000 meters.
8. Noctilucent clouds
When water vapor makes it up to the mesospheric layer of the atmosphere, where it freezes, we can be the witnesses of noctilucent clouds.
9. Iridescent clouds
Remember the nacreous clouds? Well, these are similar to those, only these are much less rare. The different colors in the clouds are produced by diffraction of sunlight by small ice crystals. They are usually very feint, but sometimes they can become quite brilliant too.
10. Kelvin- Helmholtz clouds
These kind of clouds are really cool when you look upon them (actually I've never seen any in real life, but photos of them are extremely cool). They occur when there is a velocity difference across the interference between two fluids.
Now, you must know that there are a whole lot of other kind of clouds out there, but I think these are the coolest of them all. What do you think of them? Have you ever seen any of them? Do you have pics? Feel free to share!
