Cloud shapes: Black-and-white view of flying saucer shaped clouds over over a mountainous landscape.
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Teresa Molinaro in Sicily, Italy, captured these flying-saucer-shaped clouds on January 10, 2025. Teresa wrote: “Lenticular clouds hang over the village of Petralia Soprana and the snow-capped Etna in Sicily.” Thank you, Teresa! Being able to recognize different cloud shapes can help you forecast the weather.
Clouds come in a wide variety of shapes. Some are wispy, some are puffy, some are towering. They’re also categorized by how high or low to the ground they are.
Clouds are made of air parcels saturated with water vapor. And when the water droplets become big enough, rain or snow or other precipitation can fall.
When you understand how certain clouds develop their shapes, you can learn to forecast the weather.
By Ross Lazear, University at Albany, State University of New York
Using cloud shapes to predict the weather
I’m a meteorologist, and I’ve been fascinated by weather since I was eight years old. I grew up in Minnesota, where the weather changes from wind-whipping blizzards in winter to severe thunderstorms – sometimes with tornadoes – in the summer. So, it’s not all that surprising that I’ve spent most of my life looking at clouds.
All clouds form as a result of saturation. That’s when the air contains so much water vapor that it begins producing liquid or ice.
Once you understand how certain clouds develop their shapes, you can learn to forecast the weather.
A view showing typical cloud heights shows tall cumulonimbus clouds, low level cumulus and high-level cirrus.
View larger. | Cloud types show their general heights. Image via Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
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Cotton ball cumulus clouds
Clouds that look like cartoon cotton balls or cauliflower are made up of tiny liquid water droplets and are called cumulus clouds.
Often, these are fair-weather clouds that form when the sun warms the ground and the warm air rises. You’ll often see them on humid summer days.
However, if the air is particularly warm and humid, and the atmosphere above is much colder, cumulus clouds can rapidly grow vertically into cumulonimbus. When the edges of these clouds look especially crisp, it’s a sign that heavy rain or snow may be imminent.
A white puffy cloud with some winter trees and distant mountains.
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Victoria Bryhan in Corvallis, Oregon, captured this view on March 6, 2025. Thanks, Victoria! That big, puffy, cottony cloud is a cumulus cloud.
Wispy cirrus are ice clouds
When cumulonimbus clouds grow high enough into the atmosphere, the temperature becomes cold enough for ice clouds, or cirrus, to form.
Clouds made up entirely of ice are usually more transparent. In some cases, you can see the sun or moon through them.
Cirrus clouds that forms atop a thunderstorm spread outward and can form anvil clouds. These clouds flatten on top as they reach the stratosphere, where the atmosphere begins to warm with height.
However, most cirrus clouds aren’t associated with storms at all. There are many ice clouds associated with tranquil weather that are simply regions of the atmosphere with more moisture but not precipitation.
Blue sky and high, wispy white clouds over palm trees.
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Ron Haggett in Yuma, Arizona, captured these cirrus clouds on November 11, 2022. Ron wrote: “A windy and cooler day for us here in the northwest Sonoran desert provided unexpected cirrus clouds and what appears to be a line of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds in the distance.” Thanks, Ron!
Fog and stratus clouds
Clouds are a result of saturation, but saturated air can also exist at ground level. When this occurs, we call it fog.
In temperatures below freezing, fog can actually deposit ice onto objects at or near the ground, called rime ice.
How to read clouds, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When clouds form thick layers, we add the word “stratus,” or “layer,” to the name. Stratus can occur just above the ground, or a bit higher up … we call it altostratus then. It can occur even higher and become cirrostratus, or a layer of ice clouds.
If there’s enough moisture and lift, stratus clouds can create rain or snow. These are nimbostratus.
Cloud shapes above mountains
There are a number of other unique and beautiful cloud types that can form as air rises over mountain slopes and other topography.
Lenticular clouds, for example, can look like flying saucers hovering just above, or near, mountaintops. Lenticular clouds can also form far from mountains, as wind over a mountain range creates an effect like ripples in a pond.
Rarer are banner clouds, which form from horizontally spinning air on one side of a mountain.
A cloud appears to stream off the side of a tall mountain peak.
A banner cloud appears to stream out from the Matterhorn, in the Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland. Image via Zacharie Grossen/ Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0).
Wind plays a big role
You might have looked up at the sky and noticed one layer of clouds moving in a different direction from another. Clouds move along with the wind, so what you’re seeing is the wind changing direction with height.
Cirrus clouds at the level of the jet stream – often about 6 miles (10 kilometers), above the ground – can sometimes move at over 200 miles per hour (320 kilometers per hour). But because they are so high up, it’s often hard to tell how fast they are moving.
Ross Lazear, Instructor in Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bottom line: If you become familiar with cloud shapes, it can help you know what type of weather might be coming. Read more to find out how to predict the weather by reading the shapes of the clouds.
Watch: See a thrilling ghost rainbow (fogbow)
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