Recognizing cloud types and processes that create various cloud formations is key to understanding dynamic atmospheric processes. Below are several photo galleries of common cloud types.
Use the galleries to study cloud types and check your understanding by taking a quiz.
Puffy Clouds that are low in the sky and signal "fair weather" - while indicating generally stable conditions, minimal lift.
High (alto) and very high (cirro) puffy clouds that indicate graduate changing of weather as a warm front approaches.
Towering rain clouds that indicate rainstorms, often violent, resulting from strong uplift under highly unstable conditions.
Layered clouds with little to no sky or sunlight visible. Often indicating the presence of a warm front that has gently lifted stationary cooler air. No rain, but may precede rain.
High, wispy or feathery clouds often form at the far leading edge of a warm front and may precede rainy weather within days
These clouds form above mountains as stable, moist air is forced over the elevations. These appear stationary even as the wind is blowing. The formation is uncommon, but the process is very common.
In each of these images, the flat ground is on the right and elevation (San Gabriel Mountains) is on the left. Moist air from the ocean is being pushed up the mountainsides.
Peculiar and somewhat rare clouds that form when cloud air within a cloud bank sinks downward toward the ground.
Contrails are by the exhaust of jet engines interacting with the cold air in the upper atmosphere. They are still clouds because they are made of condensed water droplets.