Little, Fluffy Clouds

and then we had the head hunt. Well during sometime during the podcast, they switched without telling you, and Matt became Roxanna. Now we have Tyler and Josh made a really funny joke, which is, we just need to get one of those birds that has the water in it or something and just have it set over the our button so it can pack the record or a baby that can press our right, that's what we need. See

Tyler's laughing. That's good. Yeah, that is. It was like a yeah, well, she probably thought correctly, like I shouldn't make any noise, right, Tyler's not thinking that. Uh, Chuck, have you ever seen a cloud? I have? I love clouds than out one for you. Have you ever heard of a man named Luke Howard? Spill it. It's a good name, incident, Luke Howard, especially for the late eighteenth early nineteenth century. That's a good name for that. It's it's kind of like a a somebody our age would

be named Luke Howard. You know, it just doesn't seem old timing to me. Well, okay, this guy named Luke Howard, young englishman, right, He's walking around planet Earth and everyone around him is calling um, well, yeah, he was born in seventeen seventy three, eighteen sixty four, didn't live to see the American Civil War come to a close, sadly, but he probably figured it would eventually. Possibly didn't predict

the following year, but who knows. Well. Back during Luke Howard's time, before he was aged twenty, right, he was walking around and people were calling clouds essences like idiots, right, that's what we called clouds essences, Like look at that beautiful puffy essence in the sky, not even that, just like, look at that essence. It's probably gonna eat us eventually, it's gonna eat the Earth. You know, we we didn't understand gases very well. We didn't understand um different states

of solidity liquid gas. What a time to be alive it was. There was a time of ignorance and profound um fear and wonder. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot left to discover, right um. Well, Luke Howard helped put the kai bosh on that discovery by classifying clouds. First of all, he started calling him clouds, not essences. He actually thought up the name cloud. He was the first to call him clouds as far as I know. He at aged twenty, he called him Luke's yeah or Howard's miss about there,

look at that beautiful Howard little fluffy Howard's um. Anyway, uh Luke joined he was a pharmacist. He joined a group called the Eskisians, which means seekers of knowledge um and as basically to entertain themselves. Every week or whenever they met, each one would present a scientific paper like

one would present for that night. And finally, when he's twenty, uh Luke gets his turn to present a paper that he prepared and it's called on the modification of clouds, and modification meant what we would consider today classification and in parentheses essences. So people knew what that Yeah, And that paper actually formed the basis of how we still classify clouds. This kid just kind of came up with

it and it was just dead on. It just made such utter sense that hundreds of years later we still use his classification system. I would say that puts him in the realm of some of the great unknown, uh important people on the planet. I would say that, you're right, my friend, that's something. It's stuff of a genius episode to me. Yes, it does. So should we should we run down the four main types of clouds that he

thought of? Yeah, he basically classified them. He modified them, in the parlance of the day, by their shape right or size, and their altitude and in a subcategory, their ability to precipitate on the earth. Right, all right, I'll go ahead and read these off, because you know, Latin is my thing. Cumulus Josh means heap or pile. And those are the ones, those are the money clouds. Those are the ones that are flat on the bottom and real billyy puffy fluffy clouds. Fluffy clouds, but usually big

not little. Yes. Uh. Stratus clouds are means layer and they are short and kind of spread across a distance. You got the syrus, which means curl of hair, interesting, whispy and thin. And then you got the old nimbus and those are rain clouds and it means rainy cloud, right, which ironically, maybe not ironically, it's probably a terrible word to use. But eight o eight State had a great song called Nimbus, and the orb had the song Little

Fuffy Clouds that this episode is named after. We should, uh, that was a great song, Little Fuffy Fluffy Clouds. We should get that in here somehow, I think we should. It was on the It appeared on the album The Orbs Adventures Beyond the Ultra Worldly. Great album, the whole thing from beginning and just awesome. It's like Dark Side of the Moon kind of except what's happier and techno year. Yeah. Have you ever been to Montana? No, I've been to Idaho, so I kind of have an idea of what you're

talking to. Deal. You know, I had a guy when I was in Montana. Explain Because I lived in the desert of Yuma, Arizona for a while, and you can see from horizon to horizon there, but a lot of times it's just blue sky, and so you know it's it's it looks expansive. But then you go to Montana and they call it Big Skyland, and you get out of the plane and you it's immediately looks larger. And a guy that lived there said it was because of

the clouds. He said, they get these huge, long, abillowy cumulus clouds and it gives it a perspective that you don't get, like when it's just a blue sky in the desert. And so it gives the illusion that this guy is actually larger. Right, So it sounded good to me. I didn't paint it on the clouds, but you can't tell. There's a difference. It's enormous and vast fast. Yeah. Alright. So and for those of us, for those who really pay attention to the podcast, there is no h on humor.

It actually is pronounced. It's not humor, Josh shol We talk about types of clouds by altitude. Yes, I think we should, chuck. Let's start with high Yeah. Um. So we talked about we talked about based on size or shape, right, yes, um. And you can take those shapes and depending on where they are in altitude, they have different names, different prefixes. The high level clouds generally have some sort of prefixed

like zero. Right, So you've got serious clouds sero cumulus and serious stratus clouds, and serious stratus clouds are often they're they're usually very high, very thin, and sometimes there's such a thin layer that you can only detect them when they're sucks deposed against the moon. Then you can see that it's creating a halo effect. That's actually a serious stratus cloud. Right, Yes, zero cumulus one of my favorites, very very high level, puffy cotton balls way up there. Yeah,

and then chuck take it home with cirrus. Uh. Serious clouds Josh are white and delicate, and their whispy, and they sometimes have little swirls at the end, uh, created by the wind, by the wind, by the end created by the wind. And you can like detect air patterns a lot of times by what it's doing to these kind of clouds. Yeah, or you can just lick your finger and hold it up. Yes, high level. We should point out the bottoms of the cloud. And it's always

measured at the bottom because clouds can be pretty tall. Yeah, the bottom is usually between twenty forty feet not usually that's how it's classified. This is when you have to break through when you're reaching your cruising altitude in an airplane. Mats in here. Now you're joking, Tyler's gone, mats in here. This is nuts. I have a feeling where the victims of some sort of practical joke perpetrated by the woman who says that you're listening to we should have a contest.

You two can produce stuff you should know. Just show up. Yeah, we'll let you in. If you have a working index finger, you can produce stuff you should know. All right, let's go down to mid level clouds. And these have bottoms that began at about six hundred twenty thousand feet. Take it away. Well, the the mid level clouds are usually described by the prefixed alto, which makes mid level clouds the Kenny of clouds. So you've got Alto cumulus alto stratus.

That written down or did you okay it's written down? I didn't want to forget Alto stratus. Yeah. Alto cumulus are like sheets of um, like little round clouds um. And then they're kind of like Sero cumulus, but they have shading right um, which I hadn't really thought about. But I've noticed the difference. Oh yeah, you know, I would encourage people that, you know, if you're at a computer and you're not just listening to this in the car or something, follow along like a type in Google images,

he's you know, it helps. It does help, because this is really difficult to describe because you you know, you can. You can very easily pick out the cumulus clouds, the fluffy one, everyone's favorite. But once you start to get into you know, serio cumulus, that kind of thing, it

just becomes a little harder to describe. Well, imagine true Alto stratus, though, I will say you might know those because those are the really really solid, thick ones, so much so that that's when you're out on a sunny day and one passes over and it gets noticeably dark and you get shadows and things like that. Those are Alto stratus. And then the low level clouds you want to talk about them, yeah, below set right, So these are the ones that we would conceive of, um creating fog.

Yeah right, Um, there's Cumulus strato Cumulus stratus stratus clouds are the ones that resemble fog, that make this guy look overcast, where it's just like you can't tell it's nothing but clouds or else if it's just kind of a great day or what's going on? Did you hit your head that kind of thing. Yeah, And there's also the classic fair weather cumulus, and those are the those are the money clouds, that's when it's really bright and blue, big puffy cotton balls that look like funny rabbits or

Lyndon Johnson or whatever. Right. And then there's there's strato cumulus um where you can usually pick those out at night as well, um most easily because they're the ones that pass in front of the moon, right, and there's

like breaks in them, and that's strato cumulus. So like it's it's so strange to think because you've experienced in your thirty nine thirty nine years walking around this planet all these different types of clouds, right, but you might as well have been walking around calling them essences because we didn't really realize that they have all these different classifications. Are that the ones that the moon breakthrough here there are actually um strato cumulus right um. The ones that

are the big, big fluffy clouds are cumulus. The ones that rain are nimbus, Yeah, Cumulo nimbus clouds are thunderstorm clouds basically low level and uh nimbus stratus are also very the dark, low hanging clouds, right, and those are attached into like this kind of extra category called vertically to veloped clouds. Right. Um, these things are so tall, so large, and they form vertically uh in these piles

that they actually transcend altitudes, they cross over altitudinal boundaries. Okay, so they creep into different like low level and mid level right yeah. Um, so those are the types of clouds. Right. Are you still with us? I am yeah, if I was not in it, we got through the boring part. Now we're going to talk about how clouds form, right, yeah, this is a good part. I agree. Evaporation and well let's start this out with something that comes later in

the article. Clouds are collections of little water droplets and crystallized water molecules. That's what a cloud is, right, We should have led the show off with that. Basically, cloud forms. And here if you ever are wondering how cloud forms, if anyone ever asks you, just bust this out. Clouds

form when warm, moist air encounters cooler air. Simple as that. Sure, Um, we can get into a little more complexity, shall we Yes, Uh, think about a hot day and you have like pour some water on the asphalt on a hot day, it's

going to evaporate quicker. And you a dummy would just say, well it's hot, right, Yeah, But the reasons happening is because the water molecules are are more excited it's hot, They're moving around more, they can spread out further, can spread out from a body of water and then basically bust free into water vapor more easily. Right, And Toothman who wrote this article uses the example of a bird bath, right, yes, but you can use the bird bath is pretty much

a metaphor for any body of water on Earth. Clouds ultimately formed from the evaporation of water on the Earth's surface. Which, uh so, these water molecules become excited turn into water vapor, which is capable of interacting with the air. They may rise up when they encounter cooler air higher up, they're going to condense all of a sudden and full warm clouds. Right,

that's called a convective cloud boom. It can also happen when warm moist air encounters a cold front, just a piece of cold air that's not necessarily higher in altitude, but it's coming in front the right or the left. And then along that front where the warm moist air

meets the edge of the coal. There the edge that's created that's going to cause precipitation boom again and clouds, clouds josh also form a little easier if the water vapor uh, that's evaporating, how something to grab onto so that allows it to change into a liquid or solid phase easier. And they call these condensation nuclei or freezing nuclei. Sounds fancy, it's really what we're talking about is dust,

sea salt. There's like a wildfire, soot from the wildfire stuff in the air serve as particulate matter, yeah, particular matter,

and that that serves to make the clouds form quicker. Right, because what you have is something that it forms the nucleus of this water opplet, and it starts attracting more and more and more and more, and then eventually this uh, this water droplet gets so heavy that it can't be sustained against the force of gravity any longer, which pulls it down to Earth as a rain drop, or if it's cold enough, pulls it down to earth as a nice crystal, which you might know and love as a

snowflake meteorology with Josh Clark. Before we move on to that, which is awesome, I do want to point out that one of the other things that can serve as a uh condensation nuclei is bacteria. Plant bacteria and the air can help clouds form more quickly. That's right. It's weird, man, is it weird? I don't know it just it is to me. Why we know you can't see it. It's happening, but you can't see it. So anything I can't see

it's just weird. Not weird. That ultra violet light. Yeah, yeah, okay, alright, microscopic stuff as weird. I hate art. Alright, chuck. Clouds move around, we should say, because the difference in the air temperature within the cloud then outside it. You can push it around here and there. Yeah, let's look a good way to look at clouds that I realized from researching this article is that um clouds almost follow the first law of thermodynamics, Right, They can't be created or destroyed,

They just change formation. Right. If you look at clouds as part of the rain cycle, right that that that is basically this interaction between the water on the earth surface and the atmosphere, and they're they're a reaction. They're part of this reaction. Different types of clouds, right. Um. Then they're they're constantly moving. This water vapor is either in the air, invisible as water vapor, visible as a cloud, or visible as part of the water on the earth surface. Right.

So clouds like churn into one another. It's not like I'm a cumulus cloud now, I'm just gone, right. They'll usually turn into one another as they rise and fall, and then it's all, yeah, it's a part of the big cycle. Right. So say that you have a big old cumulus cloud, nice warm, moist cumulus cloud, all right, love them, and it hits a wedge of coal. Are

that cold front causes precipitation? Right? Um? And it's actually usually when a warm a warm cloud meets cold there the warm clouds forced up, right uh, And it's going to cool, which will cause precipitation. But it's also going to cause that cloud to just rise further and further and it's going to evolve, so it'll hit that middle altitude and become like an Alto stratus or alto cumulus cloud.

It's gonna break up a little further and finally will probably reach into the upper atmosphere and become a serious cloud. And then you know, um jazz hands or what is it? What does those hands call? Dream hands? Dream and it turns back into water vapor possibly just kind of drifts along until it reaches the right conditions to become a cloud again, or it might just travel back to Earth and condense into a body of water. You could do a little one man show dream hand Josh explains clouds

through uh beats and physical movements. Have you seen the dream Hands video? And now I have gotta show you this. I thought you were talking about the rainbow guy at first. Which one is that full double rainbow? No, it's very similar to that. That guy's he's full of one. He's like, look at those essences of something. Uh. So we talked about rain a little bit, We talked about snow a little bit. This is what I found most interesting. What

what about the others? What about sleep? Freezing rain, and hail? I found this endlessly interesting. I did because freezing rain, I mean, I didn't know how any of this stuff worked. And I was in I took a meteorology class in college. I guess it just sort of left my brain space

at some point. But freezing and Josh is when it's a snowflake at first falls down through the atmosphere, gets a little warmer, melts, turns back into rain, continues to fall, passes through another layer of cold air, becomes super cool, but it doesn't refreeze, hits the ground and hits something so cold on the ground that it freezes. Right, that's freezing rain. Yes, that's different than sleep sleets, sort of the same thing, except it actually has enough time to refreeze.

The melted snowflake refreezes before it hits the ground the cold air, right, you know that's on the ground and up as big enough so that it as that droplet is passing through, it refreezes and then take it away. Hale. Well, hail is particularly interesting because it's associated with um severe

storms that have a lot of updrafts and gusts within it. Right, So this the the ice crystals or the rain droplets are being kicked up and around, and you know it's freezing in in thawing and refreezing and more water vapors being attracted to it, and the gusts are strong enough that this can be prolonged so that it turns into ice chunks the size of like Evolvo. It collects more stuff. Basically, is it's going down than the wind says no, no no, no,

you're going back up, And it goes back down. Then it goes back up, and then do you have, like you said, damage damaging hail. Right, Uh, it just can't be sustained any longer. It's just too heavy. Which that's the story with all precipitation, right, Yeah, it's the stuff forming up in the atmosphere out of water and it's either cold enough to freeze, or it's not so it's rain or it's snow, and then it becomes so fat that gravity can't support it any longer. The wonders of

the earth. Chunks of ice can form out of invisible nothing's in the air and fall on your car. Isn't that awesome? It is pretty awesome, like this kind of stuff. I used to sit on the my roof in college and talk about, you know, with my friends endlessly. Really I used to talk about the Illuminati. Oh yeah, well that too. My friend Jason actually that lives in Japan. Now, he was my first friend to turn me onto all these like stuff they don't want you to know type stuff.

He was everyone had that first friend. I was like, what secret societies? Tell me more? And I was like, clouds are cool. Yeah. I have to say I was a little disappointed. I thought this was gonna be. This ended up being more of like, well, we gotta understand this to understand everything, and I see I was blown away. Where are you really? I'm glad, Yeah, I'm glad. Man childlike wonder, Josh. Let's talk about why clouds. What they do. One of the things they do is move dust. Yeah,

and is mind blowing. I think it is. What is it thirteen million tons? Well that's just between Africa and a certain spot of the Amazon basin. It is kind

of at least to desertification. Well can One of the cool things about clouds is that if you have particular matter, as we saw, whether it's plant bacteria or from wildfires, um, it's going to cause precipitation a lot more easily, which is the idea behind cloud seating, right, like the disaster by the Royal Air Force in where they seated clouds and like ninety million tons of rain hit in a day and killed a lot of people in Great Britain, and the Royal Air Force is like, whoops is going

to be classified till two thousand one. And when I say it worked, I don't mean I mean it worked like it rained so much or not? It worked awesome. They killed people China. UM did their bid to control the weather by dissipating clouds by impregnating them with silver eyedie cloud seating, and apparently we're doing it. We're using

this to UM to control climate change as well. The problem is if you have too much particulate matter, uh, it's going to spread out and the water droplets that are going to be attracted to it are going to be very small because there's maybe one piece of particular matter for every water droplet, rather than one piece for every million water droplets, which are going to form big fat rain drops. Right. So therefore that leads to desertification.

Did that make sense? Okay? I wonder since bacteria can serve as a particulate I wonder if potentially you could have disease rained down upon a nation. I would imagine, So there's a movie platform you right there, buddy, Hey, it's going on all around us right now, is it? Sure. All right, so let's talk about what else they do to the Earth. They serve as a bar area for heat both coming in and out. They absorb about of the heat and they also reflect about of the heat

back to the Sun. Well, it depends. If you have low level clouds, you're going to have a cooler temperature because low level clouds are the best at reflect think solar energy back into space. If you have high level clouds, you're going to especially at night, you're going to have warmer temperatures because the highest level clouds are the best that acting as a blanket around the Earth. Yeah, they

do both. They absorb some, they bounce some back, and then once it passes through that it can contain it within the Earth. On that within the Earth, but between the Earth's surface and the clouds like a blanket. That's exactly right, which is why a cloudless night is always colder than a cloudy night, because that solar radiation that's reached the Earth is shooting right back into space, so

that that's not endlessly interesting to you. Still. Yeah, Okay, I wish it was, Chuck, I really wish it was. How about that Illuminati though, Yeah, there's that uh should we talk about weird clouds? Oh? I think we should. Man, we've got contrails, which I thought was just like literally coming out of the exhaustive jets. It's actually that's vapor shot out by jet exhaust that's freezing or condensing into these little vapor clouds. And we won't get into the

whole kim trail thing. Those are different. Well, that's just the whole controversy there. Actually, Maddie's in here, and uh, if you want to know about kim trails, they have a stuff they don't want you to know about kim trails. So instead of us flopping, we'll just direct you that way. Um, lenticular clouds. Did you look up some of these picture wise? Uh? I wish you hadn't asked me that. I wish I would have printed them out. Lenticular clouds and cap clouds.

Lenticular are layered and very swirly and it looks they look like a funnel shaped stack of pancakes. Very cool looking. Cap clouds look like a big disk on top of a mountain, like kind of sitting on the nose of the mountain. I've seen that one before. That's really cool.

There's actually a really cool phenomena I can't remember what it's called, where if you're at a high enough altitude and it's cloudy, you your shadow is cast upward, oh really yeah, rather than downward, and it makes you look like this huge giant, like walking through the sky because usually it's so cloudy that you can't see any breaks in it, and it just looks like you're this huge thing just walking across the sky above you, so the shadow is above. I can't remember what it's called, but

it's a pretty neat effect. I did a hike one time in Big sur where we hiked up above the cloud line and it's it's like when you fly above it in a jet, except you're walking and you feel like you're I mean, you can see nothing. It's weird. It's like you're on top of the world. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, it is very sweet. That's a heck of a hike, man. Yeah, well they were they were low clouds in pixer. It wasn't like the handies or anything like that. I mean,

it was a good hike helicopter exactly. Um, then I'm sorry the mamatics clouds. If you live in New York City, last year or if you have an Internet connection, you might have seen these pictures of mo Maddis clouds, and they are It doesn't happen often at all. That's why people were like, what's going on in New York now or being attacked? But they're big billowy balls all clumped together,

like hanging down from the underside of a cloud. And that's why they're called mom Maddist clouds because it means like utter or breast. Oh really, yeah, that makes sense. And yeah and there I mean the there's the internets allowsy with pictures of it last year, really cool looking because the sunset hit it at the right time and it was like these billowy fireballs. It looked like it's very intimidating. Cool but no harm, no fireballs, really no,

it's just clouds, just clouds, just ences. Uh you want to cover any of those other ones? Well, the knock de lucent cloud is pretty interesting. I have to say, all right, there's this. If you are on Earth, you would call it a knock de lucent cloud. If you are up in space looking down on it, you'd call it a polar mesospheric cloud. That's pretty interesting. This is

a very rare cloud. Um that at twilight. The apparently the makeup of these clouds, uh there exists very high up in the atmosphere, makes them glow blue, which is unusual for clouds. And they actually think that these clouds are new. They're not, I don't want to say, they're not naturally occurring. They're not old. They haven't been around since any time before three, which happens to be the year that krakataw the volcano in Java, blew its top

and that's when people first started seeing these clouds. Right after that happened, and apparently Krakataw um sent remember the volcano episode. Okay, what was that stuff called tefla, te tefra. It's sent Tefra as much as two D sixty two thousand feet into the air, which is eighty kilometers into the atmosphere, and apparently stayed there and started forming these clouds. And well, the weird thing is is they thought that this was just a temporary deal. But they've been around

ever since, right, yeah, they have. And they also think that possibly pollution, meteoroids, and space shuttle activity are all contributing to them. The continued existence of noct de lucent clouds, which means shining at night. Yeah, these are cool looking. These look like um, they almost look like Nebula. They're sort of vainy looking and glowing, and uh, Nebula is like nothing more than a cloud in space, right, it's

a space cloud. Yeah. And there's actually one called the Smith Cloud, which is enormous and it's headed for the Milky Way galaxy and when that, when it impacts in twenty million years, it's going to put on quite a show in the sky apparently, and it will rain down. Yeah, well we won't be around to see that. There's clouds. I thought it was gonna be cooler. It wasn't. I'm

sorry everybody. I thought it was cool. If you want to learn more about clouds, including a little shout out to the Cloud Appreciation Society, you can type in clouds at the search bar at how stuff works dot com. It'll bring that up. And of course, now it's time for listener mail. Probably the most interesting part of this podcast. It's definitely the most heart warning. Okay, uh, Josh, I'm gonna call this. We're thinking about you, Jody, Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I know you don't do this

kind of stuff. Much because you get way too many requests, which is true, but this is we had to make an exception here. This from Brendon, by the way, and Brendon's fiance Jody, whose nickname is Frankie, has a rare form of leukemia and she's undergoing treatment for that right now. The past couple of weeks have been really rough because she's been really really sick, like to the point of

not being able to get out of bed. And unfortunately I am over a thousand miles away finishing school, and she really doesn't have anyone around to take care of her at this point apart from the medical staff. Very sad. One of the few things that's helping her to stay sane while she is in bed trying not to be sick and resisting passing out from pain is your podcast. Your humor and unique fun information is a great distraction

from all the stuff she has to deal with. And I cannot thank you enough for the quality show that you produce. I really really appreciate it. If you could somehow give her a shout out on the air, even it's very generic, Hello to anybody out there who is in pain hanging there, or if you could just plug the National Bone Marrow Registry at b the match dot org for something that would be cool. So we're going to get specific and say, Jody A k A, Frankie and U talk, hang in there, and I told Brendan

to keep us informed on Frankie's progress. And you guys are getting married and there's you know, a lot to look forward to. So I hope you get better soon and listen to us while you're getting well and you can getting hitched and getting hitched. I want to hear about your wedding days. Want to hear about So that's

for joy. That was nice, Chuck, Hey, Jody A k A, Frankie and Brendan and Brendan, and as Brendan suggested, everybody out there who is in a lot of pain and listening, Uh, it's possible that you're in a lot of pain because you're listening. But if you've tried that and you're steal in pain and you've gone back to listening, hey, and hang in there with thinking of you. Yeah, we'll have to tell him that this is going to be at the end of the Clouds episode because he probably would

make it through it ordinary. No, No, that's a good point, Chow, hang in there, listen to it. It's gonna be it's gonna pay off there in the end. Well, let's see. If you have a pretty cool picture of a cloud, we want to see it. Go post it on Facebook. How about that? Uh? We have a Facebook page Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know we also tweet s y s K podcast uh. And then you can also send us the traditional email at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for moral on this and

that's of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you