I had a viewer, Wes Smith, reach out last Friday regarding today’s cover photo: I observed these unusual clouds with the moon earlier tonight. What type of clouds are these? This was taken in the Porter area around 8pm.
Those cloud formations have been named pretty much based on what they look like: Cloud streets. They are, obviously, fair weather clouds and form when warm air rises and cool air sinks in a nice even pattern. They run in the direction of the warm wind, usually our coast, but almost certainly south to north. Technically, they are just horizontal convective rolling cumulus clouds!
The graphic above illustrates the “red” warm rising air and “blue” cool sinking air that forms these clouds. You can read an interesting and simple paper from NOAA with some very cool photos right here.
As for who actually named these formations “Cloud streets”, all I can find is that they were named after Dr. Theodore von Kármán (1881-1963), a brilliant scientist who advanced the study of jet propulsion and wind tunnels and aerodynamic wind flow. He first explained how these form.
Imagine a world not so long ago when we didn’t classify clouds, as everyone looked at clouds individually: clouds come and go, come in different sizes and shapes, different colors at different heights. A couple of hundred years ago no one thought of actually naming clouds! They were just clouds, moving along in the sky each day. Something to paint. So cloud classification didn’t happen until Luke Howard stepped up in the early 1800s with a naming system using Latin.
RELATED: MY BLOG: WHAT’S IN A CLOUD NAME?
Coincidentally, the same time I received Wes’ email regarding these clouds, I also got an email from the Cloud Appreciation Society. They offer a four-part video course on Cloud Spotting--free if you are a subscriber and about $20 otherwise.
Enjoy and keep pinning those fabulous cloud photos!
RELATED: CLICK2HOUSTON.COM/PINS
Frank
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