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As a result, the cloud base can vary from a very light to very dark grey depending on the cloud's thickness and how much light is being reflected or transmitted back to the observer. Thin clouds may look white or appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background. High tropospheric and non-tropospheric clouds appear mostly ...
A nimbostratus cloud is a multilevel, amorphous, nearly uniform, and often dark-grey cloud that usually produces continuous rain, snow, or sleet, but no lightning or thunder. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Although it is usually a low-based stratiform cloud, it actually forms most commonly in the middle level of the troposphere and then spreads vertically ...
Clouds of the genus cumulonimbus have very-dark-gray-to-nearly-black flat bases and very high tops that can penetrate the tropopause. They develop from cumulus when the air mass is convectively highly unstable. They generally produce thunderstorms, rain or showers, and sometimes hail, strong outflow winds, and/or tornadoes at ground level.
Clouds form when the dew point temperature of water is reached in the presence of condensation nuclei in the troposphere. The atmosphere is a dynamic system, and the local conditions of turbulence, uplift, and other parameters give rise to many types of clouds. Various types of cloud occur frequently enough to have been categorized.
They mostly appear under the precipitation of major rain-bearing clouds; these are nimbostratus and cumulonimbus clouds, and are classified as types of pannus clouds. Stratus fractus can also form beside mountain slopes, without the presence of nimbus clouds (clouds that precipitate), and their color can be from dark grey to almost white.
Unlike hail or sleet, graupel is soft and can be crushed easily in your hand, and is sometimes called "soft hail." It is also usually smaller than hail, with a diameter of around 0.08-0.2 inches.
Noctilucent clouds (NLCs), or night shining clouds, [1] are tenuous cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere of Earth. When viewed from space, they are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) , detectable as a diffuse scattering layer of water ice crystals near the summer polar mesopause .
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