Cloud Types
Identify the three main cloud types — cumulus (fluffy, fair weather), stratus (flat layers, overcast or drizzle), and cirrus (thin wisps, high up) — and understand that clouds form when water vapour in the air cools and condenses into tiny droplets
What a learner can do afterwards
- Name and describe the three main cloud types: cumulus, stratus, cirrus
- Explain that clouds form when water vapour cools and condenses
- Use cloud type to make a simple prediction about the weather
1 · Read
Rain falls out of clouds, but clouds do not start as rain. They start as water vapour, an invisible gas in the air, even on a sunny day. When warm air carrying vapour rises high, it cools. Cool air cannot hold as much vapour, so tiny droplets stick together. Millions of droplets floating together make a cloud.
Clouds come in different shapes, and each shape has a name. Cumulus clouds are puffy and rounded, like cotton balls. Stratus clouds are flat and gray, and often cover the whole sky like a blanket. Cirrus clouds are thin wispy streaks high up. It is so cold there that cirrus is made of tiny bits of ice. All three are tiny drops or ice floating together.
Omar looks up one morning and sees big fluffy white clouds in the sky. He knows those are cumulus clouds, so he grabs his bike, expecting a fine, sunny day. His sister Zoe looks up later and sees the whole sky covered by a flat gray blanket. She knows those are stratus clouds, so she packs an umbrella just in case. Thin cirrus high up usually means fair weather too.
Next time you look up, ask yourself: Is it puffy like cotton (cumulus)? Is it a flat gray blanket (stratus)? Or is it a thin wispy streak way up high (cirrus)? The shape hints at the weather to come.
Cumulus is fluffy and usually sunny, stratus is flat and often rainy, and cirrus is thin, high, and icy, but every cloud starts as tiny drops of water or bits of ice floating together.
The rewritten reading was written for this dataset.
2 · Watch
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Where it sits
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Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.