How dark can storm clouds get?

(WMC) – Often times when we look at the clouds they are white but before a storm you may notice that the clouds will get darker or more gray and dreary. Clouds form when the air close to the ground warms it will begin to rise and within that rising air it contains water vapor.

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Can clouds be dark?

As clouds build vertically and get thicker, such as a cumulonimbus cloud, less light can pass through the cloud. This will give it a darker appearance. This is also the reason why the bottom of clouds sometimes appear darker than the top.

What makes a storm cloud black?

When it’s about to rain, clouds darken because the water vapor is clumping together into raindrops, leaving larger spaces between drops of water. Less light is reflected. The rain cloud appears black or gray.

What are dark storm clouds called?

Cumulonimbus
Altitude	500-16,000 m (2,000-52,000 ft)
Classification	Family D (Vertically developed)
Appearance	Dark-based storm cloud capable of impressive vertical growth.
Precipitation cloud?	Very common Rain, Snow, Snow pellets or Hail, heavy at times

What do really dark clouds mean?

A: Very dark looking or black clouds are probably those that contain a lot of rain in them and part of a thunderstorm, McRoberts adds. “In general, the severity of a storm is related to cloud height, which is why dark clouds are usually an indicator of bad weather.

Are storm clouds dark?

(WMC) – Often times when we look at the clouds they are white but before a storm you may notice that the clouds will get darker or more gray and dreary. Clouds form when the air close to the ground warms it will begin to rise and within that rising air it contains water vapor.

Why are storm clouds GREY?

Basically, clouds look gray when they block out sunlight. A cloud gets thicker as it gathers more water droplets and ice crystals. The thicker a cloud gets, the less light can pass through it. So when you look up at a rain cloud, the base or bottom of it looks gray.

Why are storm clouds blue?

The cloud is inherently white/gray (it’s clear water droplets). It’s shadowed from the red light to the west, but exposed to the blue light from the rest of the (apparently mostly clear) sky, so it is mostly illuminated with blue light, and that’s what it will reflect.

Why are clouds white?

Clouds are white because light from the Sun is white. As light passes through a cloud, it interacts with the water droplets, which are much bigger than the atmospheric particles that exist in the sky.

What causes a lightning?

In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning.

Why are clouds white 10?

All the suspended particles in cloud have size very larger than the wavelength of visible light falling onto it. So, it suffers almost zero scattering. Hence the clouds which have droplets of water with a>>λ are generally white.

Why do clouds float?

FLOATING CLOUDS.

The water and ice particles in the clouds we see are simply too small to feel the effects of gravity. As a result, clouds appear to float on air. Clouds are composed primarily of small water droplets and, if it’s cold enough, ice crystals.

How heavy is a cloud?

According to scientists, the weight of the average cumulus cloud is 1.1 million pounds! Think about that for a moment. This means that at any given moment, there are millions of pounds of water floating above your head.

What are storm clouds?

a large, dark cloud that brings rain or comes before a storm.

Where are nimbus clouds found?

Nimbostratus has a diffuse cloud base generally found anywhere from near surface in the low levels to about 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in the middle level of the troposphere. Although usually dark at its base, it often appears illuminated from within to a surface observer.

What is the biggest cloud ever recorded on Earth?

Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old cloud harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.

Do altostratus clouds rain?

The Sun or moon may shine through an altostratus cloud, but will appear watery or fuzzy. If you see altostratus clouds, a storm with continuous rain or snow might be on its way. Occasionally, rain falls from an altostratus cloud.

How does water vapor turn into rain?

Condensation is the process of water vapor turning back into liquid water, with the best example being those big, fluffy clouds floating over your head. And when the water droplets in clouds combine, they become heavy enough to form raindrops to rain down onto your head.

Why are clouds Coloured?

The colors result from a combination of Rayleigh and Mie scattering. As light passes through the atmosphere, most of the shorter blue wavelengths are scattered leaving the majority of longer waves to continue. Therefore, the predominate color of sunlight changes to these longer wavelengths.

Why do clouds move?

Clouds move because the wind is carrying the parcel of cloudy air along. Wind occurs at all levels of the atmosphere from the ground up to higher than a jumbo jet can fly. Sometimes there can be no wind on the ground, but cirrus clouds very high up can be seen moving because of the wind where they are.

Can a tornado happen without clouds?

Tornadoes can occur without funnel clouds, as shown in this example from NSSL. The dust cloud and cloud base above it were rotating, indicating a continuous cloud-to-ground vortex (tornado).

Why do clouds turn green?

“Those are the kind of storms that may produce hail and tornadoes.” Green does indicate that the cloud is extremely tall, and since thunderclouds are the tallest clouds, green is a warning sign that large hail or a tornado may be present.

Why do clouds turn pink?

Excess dust and aerosols suspended in the atmosphere diffuse and scatter light and only the longer wavelength light remains, making the clouds appear pink color or a pinkish-red sky at night.

Why is the sky blue for kids?

White light is made up of all colors of light. Nitrogen molecules scatter blue light more than they do the other colors. So a little bit of blue light bounces around in the sky and then enters our eyes. That makes the sky look blue.

Are clouds edible?

As clouds are made up of water vapor and helium, they are not harmful to eat. While eating clouds isn’t exactly harmful, it certainly isn’t nutritious.

How do you explain clouds to kids?

The Short Answer: Clouds are created when water vapor, an invisible gas, turns into liquid water droplets. These water droplets form on tiny particles, like dust, that are floating in the air. You hang up a wet towel and, when you come back, it’s dry.

Is lightning hotter than the sun?

In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun). When lightning strikes a tree, the heat vaporizes any water in its path possibly causing the tree to explode or a strip of bark to be blown off.

Why is space dark?

Because space is a near-perfect vacuum — meaning it has exceedingly few particles — there’s virtually nothing in the space between stars and planets to scatter light to our eyes. And with no light reaching the eyes, they see black. —What color is the sunset on other planets?

Why is the sky blue?

The sky is blue due to a phenomenon called Raleigh scattering. This scattering refers to the scattering of electromagnetic radiation (of which light is a form) by particles of a much smaller wavelength.

Why is the sky blue 12?

White light is composed of seven light and among them, blue light scatters the most as the wavelength of the blue light is comparable to the size of particles in the atmosphere. So, the sky appears blue. Hence, the sky appears blue because the fine particles in the atmosphere scatter light of shorter wavelengths.

What is red lightning?

Sprites, also known as red lightning, are electrical discharges that appear as bursts of red light above clouds during thunderstorms.

Why do clouds thunder?

Thunder is caused by lightning, which is essentially a stream of electrons flowing between or within clouds, or between a cloud and the ground. The air surrounding the electron stream is heated to as hot as 50,000 degrees Farhenheit, which is three times hotter than the surface of the sun.

How are storm clouds formed?

To create a thunderstorm, the unstable air needs to have a nudge upward. This lift usually comes from differences in air density. Warmer, less dense air rises upward, creating lift. As the air lifts higher and higher, it causes a storm cloud to grow taller and taller.

How did the storm clouds look like?

Cloud Group	Cloud Height	Cloud Types
High Clouds = Cirrus	Above 18,000 feet	Cirrus Cirrostratus Cirrocumulus

What is rain that never reaches the earth?

Sometimes if the air is dry enough at low levels of the atmosphere, it won’t quite reach the surface. The phenomenon that appears instead is called virga. Virga is defined by the National Weather Service as, “streaks or wisps of precipitation falling from a cloud but evaporating before reaching the ground.”

Can a cloud fall?

Even though a cloud weighs tons, it doesn’t fall on you because the rising air responsible for its formation keeps the cloud floating in the air. The air below the cloud is denser than the cloud, thus the cloud floats on top of the denser air nearer the land surface.

Can you physically touch a cloud?

Unfortunately, it does not feel like cotton balls or cotton candy, but most people have technically touched a cloud before. If you wanted to touch an airborne cloud, the best way to do this is either skydiving or in a hot air balloon, though I would not want to be stuck in a cloud while in a hot air balloon.

Why do clouds not fall?

Like everything on this planet, the tiny droplets that make up a cloud are drawn towards the Earth by gravity. But these droplets are so small that it’s hard for them to push past all the air beneath them. This means that they don’t fall very fast at all – in fact, only about one centimetre per second.

Can a cloud hold a person?

Clouds are made of millions of these tiny liquid water droplets. The droplets scatter the colors of the sunlight equally, which makes clouds appear white. Even though they can look like cushy puffballs, a cloud can’t support your weight or hold anything up but itself.

Why does rain fall from clouds?

Precipitation forms in the clouds when water vapor condenses into bigger and bigger droplets of water. When the drops are heavy enough, they fall to the Earth. If a cloud is colder, like it would be at higher altitudes, the water droplets may freeze to form ice.

Are rain clouds heavy?

They may look all light and fluffy, but the reality is that clouds are actually pretty heavy. Researchers have calculated that the average cumulus cloud – which is that nice, white fluffy kind you see on a sunny day – weighs an incredible 500,000 kg (or 1.1 million pounds!).

Do nimbostratus clouds produce hail?

Cumulonimbus clouds and nimbostratus clouds can also can produce snow, hail, sleet, and other forms of precipitation.

What clouds produce snow?

Thick, dense stratus or stratocumulus clouds producing steady rain or snow often are referred to as nimbostratus clouds. In contrast to layered, horizontal stratus, cumulus clouds are more cellular (individual) in nature, have flat bottoms and rounded tops, and grow vertically.

How high up are nimbostratus clouds?

The main body of Nimbostratus almost invariably occurs at altitudes between 2 km and 4 km (6 500 ft and 13 000 ft) in polar regions, between 2 km and 7 km (6 500 ft and 23 000 ft) in temperate regions and between 2 km and 8 km (6 500 ft and 25 000 ft) in tropical regions.

What is the rarest cloud?

Scientists have called noctilucent clouds “the highest, driest, coldest, and rarest clouds on Earth.” Indeed, most of the planet’s clouds form in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere closest to the ground, and occasionally in the stratosphere.

How heavy is the heaviest cloud?

That is about 500,000 kilograms or 1.1 million pounds (about 551 tons). But, that “heavy” cloud is floating over your head because the air below it is even heavier— the lesser density of the cloud allows it to float on the dryer and more-dense air.

How did they weigh a cloud?

A typical cloud has a volume of around 1km3 and a density of around 1.003kg per m3 – about 0.4 per cent lower than that of the surrounding air, which is why they float. So cranking through the maths, that means that a typical cloud weighs around a million tonnes.

What are long skinny clouds called?

Stratus cloud often look like thin, white sheets covering the whole sky. Since they are so thin, they seldom produce much rain or snow. Sometimes, in the mountains or hills, these clouds appear to be fog.

What type of cloud is fog?

Fog: Layer of stratus clouds on or near the ground.

Why are clouds white and fluffy?

When warm air rises from the ground, it carries water vapor with it. When the water vapor meets the cold air found high in the sky, the gas condenses to liquid and forms cumulus clouds. While these fluffy-white clouds look like soft pillows of cotton, they are actually composed of small water droplets.

How old is the water on Earth?

A recent study estimated that there are water molecules on Earth that are up to 4.6 billion years old, which means they predate the formation of the Milky Way.

What are clouds made of?

A cloud is made of water drops or ice crystals floating in the sky. There are many kinds of clouds. Clouds are an important part of Earth’s weather.

How can you make it rain?

1. Seeding the Sky. The most widely used weather-modification technique is probably cloud seeding, which involves priming clouds with particles of silver iodide. …
2. Rain Rockets. Airplanes aren’t the only way to seed clouds. …
3. The Atmosphere Zapper. …
4. Ice-Breaking Booms. …
5. Riding the Lightning.

Can there be wind without clouds?

Yes. You may experience an entirely cloudless day for utmost convenience. That is when there aren’t enough rising levels of humidity to cause them. Clouds are just condensed water vapor when water in the air and temperature and water vapor coincide.

What happens to the top of the cloud?

The heavier hail becomes negatively charged and is either suspended by the rising air or falls toward the lower part of the storm. These collisions and air movements cause the top of the thunderstorm cloud to become positively charged and the middle and lower part of the storm to become negatively charged.

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