Reading the Sky: Clues in Clouds

Instructor: Jay Anderson

Who of us have not stopped now and again to admire the clouds? They are a ubiquitous part of the sky, sometimes overlooked or disparaged, but they are a tell-tale consequences of physical processes in the atmosphere. The secrets they keep can be teased out by an understanding of how and why they form, why they take on the shapes that they do, and what they reveal about the weather, both present and future.
Would you recognize the signs of a severe thunderstorm? What do halos tell us about the sky? What causes hail and how does rain form? Why do snowflakes have the shape they do? Why are Novembers full of cloud? How does a winter storm appear in a satellite photo? We’ll answer some of these questions and others, so that you’ll never look at clouds in the same way again.