leo107•1d ago

Caught myself staring at a lenticular cloud for 10 minutes yesterday

I was pouring a driveway in Golden and kept looking up at this smooth lens-shaped cloud hovering over the mountains. It got me thinking about how most folks just call anything flat and gray an "overcast" when there's a ton of variety up there. Altocumulus undulatus and stratocumulus are totally different beasts in how they form and what they mean for weather. Anyone else notice people mixing up cloud types more often than they should?

2 comments

2 Comments

david_adams1d ago

Man, I'm terrible with cloud names lol. I just call em "big fluffy boi" or "the scary dark one that's about to ruin my day.

avery_fox931d ago

And you're not wrong to call them that because honestly that's what most people do. But the second you start noticing things like lenticular clouds you realize they don't move the same way regular clouds do. They just sit there frozen while everything else blows past them. It's wild how they form when stable moist air gets pushed up over a mountain range and creates that standing wave effect. Once you see a few of them you start spotting the difference between a real lenticular and just some weird shaped cumulus that looks similar. Makes you wonder why schools don't spend like one day just teaching people the basics of what's going on above their heads.