CLOUDS

Clouds are very important for the world’s weather. There are different kinds of them. They float in the sky in various shapes. What makes a cloud? How does it form? A big part of our world is water. There is water in the air, too. We can’t see it because it’s water vapour. The water vapour goes up to the sky and gets cooler on the way.

They come together and look like clouds. People name clouds according to their shapes and level in the sky. There are high-level clouds, midlevel clouds and low-lewel clouds. High-level clouds are cirrocumulus, cirrus and cirrostratus. Mid-levels are altocumulus, nimbostratus and altostratus and the low-level clouds are stratus, cumulus and stratocumulus.

The name of the cirrus clouds comes from Latin. It means “curl of hair”. These clouds are thin and they appear in the sky when the weather is fine. But in fact they are the indicators of a weather change for the worse. They are the highest clouds. Because it’s very cold up there, they are made of ice crystals. These crystals give these clouds a bright white look. There are water droplets in every cloud. These droplets can come together and make a bigger droplet. When the droplet is heavy enough, it falls as rain. It snows when the weather is very cold. These droplets freeze when it’s cold enough and drops as snowflakes.