What does thunderhead clouds look like?
Called cumulonimbus or thunderheads, they're the most dramatic looking clouds with their tall and imposing shape. They grow vertically instead of horizontally, forming into dense towers that can reach 20,000 feet, though they've also been known to go as high as 75,000 feet.
What kind of cloud is a thunderhead?
cumulonimbus - cumuloTechnically called cumulonimbus - cumulo because they are puffy, or accumulated, and nimbus as they are dark clouds that cause rainstorms - thunderheads create some of the most violent weather on earth. This cloud formation forms when a front of cool air meets a body of hot, moist air.
Why do thunderhead clouds look like anvils?
An anvil cloud is made of ice particles; these frozen particles form in the highest levels of thunderstorms or cumulonimbus clouds. The cool shape that you see with the flat top is due to rising air in storms. The air expands and spreads out as the air hits the bottom of the stratosphere.
How tall are thunderhead clouds?
The cumulonimbus base may extend several kilometres across and occupy low to middle altitudes - formed at altitude from approximately 200 to 4,000 m (700 to 10,000 ft). Peaks typically reach to as much as 12,000 m (39,000 ft), with extreme instances as high as 21,000 m (69,000 ft) or more.
What clouds look like before a tornado?
Wall clouds form under the rain-free base (bottom) of cumulonimbus clouds. It takes its name from the fact that it resembles a dark gray wall (sometimes rotating) that lowers down from the base of the parent storm cloud, usually just before a tornado is about to form.
How heavy is a thunderhead?
A good sized cumulonimbus cloud (also known as a thunderhead) might be ten kilometers tall, with a base ten kilometers in diameter. Estimating that, we come up with a volume of 785 billion cubic meters per cloud. This gives us a mass of roughly four billion kilograms per cloud.
What is a funeral cloud?
A funnel cloud is a funnel-shaped cloud of condensed water droplets, associated with a rotating column of wind and extending from the base of a cloud (usually a cumulonimbus or towering cumulus cloud) but not reaching the ground or a water surface.
What is the rarest type of cloud?
Kelvin Helmholtz Waves are perhaps the rarest cloud formation of all. Rumored to be the inspiration for Van Gogh's masterpiece “Starry Night”, they are incredibly distinctive. They are mainly associated with cirrus, altocumulus, and stratus clouds over 5,000m.
What is the highest cloud ever recorded?
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.
What Thunderhead means?
Definition of thunderhead : a rounded mass of cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud often appearing before a thunderstorm.
What are dark clouds called?
Nimbostratus clouds are dark, gray clouds that seem to fade into falling rain or snow. They are so thick that they often blot out the sunlight.
What clouds bring thunderstorms?
Cumulonimbus clouds are menacing looking multi-level clouds, extending high into the sky in towers or plumes. More commonly known as thunderclouds, cumulonimbus is the only cloud type that can produce hail, thunder and lightning.