Head in the Clouds

My brother and I once spent a stuffy August evening driving the dusty back roads of our town. We were searching for the perfect photo op of the ominous storm clouds forming above our heads.

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I’m still not sure why I agreed to join him—I’ve been terrified of storms since I was a little girl. But as we raced between cornfields and cow pastures, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as I listened to my brother exclaim, “Those clouds are so cool!”

Years later, I’m still recovering from my storm anxieties, but I often consider how that night stirred up my enchantment with the sky.

The World Meteorological Organization’s International Cloud Atlas documents over 100 types of clouds. Along with their sheer beauty, these clouds serve many purposes. They supply precipitation. They regulate earth’s temperature, blocking some heat from the sun to keep our planet from getting too hot during the day. They also trap heat at night to prevent the warmth from escaping too fast. Recent research has shown that certain clouds even remove pollutants from earth.

Clouds are necessary to life—perhaps this is why God uses them throughout Scripture to illustrate his promise and provision. In Genesis, God set his rainbow in the clouds as a promise to never again flood the earth (Genesis 9:13). He led the Israelites out of Egypt in a pillar of cloud by day (Exodus 13:21). The psalmist praised God for covering the sky with clouds that would bring rain (Psalm 147:8). In the book of Revelation, John foretold that Jesus will one day return with the clouds (Revelation 1:7).

While stormy skies still sometimes tie my stomach into knots, I’m learning to see my Creator’s artistry and care in each airy cirrus, cotton puff cumulus, looming cumulonimbus—and especially in the rare formations that seem to fill the sky just for my enjoyment.

Lenticular Clouds

Lenticular clouds, sometimes referred to as flying saucer or stack of pancake clouds, form near mountain ranges when moist air blows across mountains, creating a series of waves. If the wind is strong enough, the moisture in the air condenses in the updrafts to form lenticular clouds. Gusty winds often blow in their vicinity.

Location Pictured: Iceland

Height of base: 6,500—16,500 ft (2,000 to 5,000 m)

Rarity: rare

Typical location: mountainous areas; generally do not form over flat areas

Shelf Clouds

Often appearing with a solid line of storms and severe wind, shelf clouds are usually attached to a cumulonimbus as a long horizontal column. Cool air from the storm cloud sinks toward the ground while moist, warm air from the ground pushes upward. The air cools as it rises, and the moisture condenses, forming the menacing shelf cloud.

Location Pictured: South Dakota

Height of base: up to 6,500 ft (2,000 m)

Rarity: common during summer months

Typical location: found on the leading edge of a thunderstorm; not unique to any geographic area

Fallstreak Holes

Sometimes called hole punch clouds, fallstreak holes appear in mid- to high-level cirrocumulus, stratocumulus, or altocumulus clouds. Fallstreak holes form when the moisture in clouds is supercooled and turns to ice. The ice crystals fall, leaving a hole in the cloud layer, but evaporate before reaching the ground, causing a wispy trail below the hole.

Height of base: 6,500–30,000 ft (1,981–9,144 m)

Rarity: rare

Typical location: not unique to any geographic area

Mammatus Clouds

These distinctive cloud formations look like bulging pouches hanging from the base of a cumulonimbus. Unlike most cloud formations, which are caused by rising warm air, mammatus clouds form when cool air within the cloud sinks. Mammatus clouds are commonly found close to strong thunderstorms.

Height of base: 13,000 ft (4000 m)

Rarity: infrequent but not particularly rare

Typical location: not unique to any geographic area

Asperitas Clouds

If the underside of an altocumulus or stratocumulus cloud appears wavy and turbulent, you may have spotted the rare asperitas cloud formation. These clouds often look like a rough sea surface viewed from underwater. Since asperitas were only recently listed as an official cloud type in 2017, meteorologists are still studying how they form. These clouds usually appear after severe thunderstorms.

Height of base: 4,000—10,000 ft (1,200—3,000 m)

Rarity: rare

Typical location: most commonly observed over the Great Plains of the US

Kelvin-Helmholtz Wave Clouds

You’re not imagining things—these clouds really do look like a line of crashing ocean waves. Kelvin-Helmholtz wave clouds form when wind above a cloud blows more quickly than the wind below the cloud. The upper winds scoop up the top cloud layer to form the wave-like shape. These clouds typically form in high altitudes areas.

Location Pictured: Dorset, UK

Height of base: usually above 16,500 ft (5,000 m)

Rarity: very rare

Typical location: most common in mountainous regions

Nacreous Clouds

Most clouds form in the troposphere, the atmosphere layer extending from the ground up to around 4–12 miles (6–20 km)—but not nacreous clouds. These iridescent whisps occur in the lower part of the stratosphere (12 miles or 20 km), but only when the temperature in that layer falls below -108ºF (-78ºC). These low temperatures form ice crystals that are much smaller than the crystals composing normal clouds. Light is scattered differently, causing the clouds to appear iridescent. Nacreous clouds are typically visible only in high latitudes during the winter months.

Location Pictured: Edinburgh, UK

Height of base: 68,500—100,000 ft (21,000—30,480 m)

Rarity: very rare

Typical location: high-latitude areas such as the Arctic, Scotland, Scandinavia, and Alaska