Mr McCloud's Cloud Quiz

"Hi ! I'm Mr McCloud.

Read through the information about clouds on the right and then have a go at my Cloud Quiz."

MrMcCloud

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:

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