Ask HN: Is there any way to know exactly where the clouds will form? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there any way to know exactly where the clouds will form?

3 pointsadhe987 comments

You can find out 'how' clouds form all over the internet, so why is it so hard to know 'where' they will form?

Could you elaborate more? There are many places where they form, and some are quite predictable about where they form.

Seattle is an example of a place which is generally cloudy, with infrequent clear days, so if you want clouds go there.

Table Mountain in Cape Town is famous for its frequent orographic clouds.

There are places which often get a marine fog layer, which is a type of cloud.

You can look at a satellite image and see a front coming through, as the band of clouds moves. If you are in Iowa and see there's a front in Colorado, then you'll be getting clouds pretty soon.

Hurricanes have rain/cloud bands which rotate around the center. Here too you can see that a band is coming, and predict where clouds will form.

Some parts of the world have a rainy season where nearly every day the clouds build up in the afternoon, with a downpour, and then clear up.

Thank you so much for your answer. But that's not what I was wondering about.

For example, is it impossible to say(or predict), "In about five minutes, clouds are going to start forming over that mountain."?

That level of detail generally requires precise details about air temperature, winds and layer mixing, humidity level, and aerosol composition, which are hard to gather.

For certain cases, like Table Mountain, it will be more predictable because there is less sensitivity to the exact conditions, and I think the weather patterns are more consistent coming off the ocean.

Then again, if you see a hurricane cloud band coming, you can predict its arrival to within 5 minutes. We were at the beach once and saw the outer band, from a hurricane hundreds of miles away, getting closer. We decided we needed to pack up and get going. From sunny sky to rain was only about 10 minutes. (We knew it was coming, and kept on eye on the sky.)

Prediction of the arrival of a storm front might also be that accurate for several hours ahead.

Not “in about five minutes” of resolution, but a simple linear prediction algorithm based on sufficient prior information (using the parameters available) would do a pretty good job. Heck, even a naive prediction like “what happened yesterday” is often a pretty good estimate. In San Diego, we have a marine layer in the mornings, and it’s pretty predictable. It’s also fairly consistent that it will dissipate by 11 AM.

Which clouds?

Noctilucent clouds, for example, can only be seen from latitudes of 45–80° both north and south, and they form around 75–85 kilometres above Earth’s surface, at the top of the mesosphere, the highest part of our atmosphere.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/climate-cha...

Perhaps you might enjoy https://CloudAppreciationSociety.org/ (no, it's not about data centres).

Thanks for the answer. I'm sorry English is not my first language.

Is it impossible to predict where and when clouds will form? That would have been a better question.

That's another 'which clouds' question.

Banded pressure troughs in areas with sufficient water vapor will form clouds, these can be seen on synoptic weather charts and meteorologists will predict cloud cover.

You could train an AI to predict cloud patterns from synoptic charts and humidity data after backfitting doppler radar that images water heavy clouds.

probably (also it's probably been done already).

See: https://www.open.edu.au/advice/careers/science/meteorologist if you have an interest.

Weather Radar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ7rNeQck2A shows 'wet' approaching clouds

    Australia has the fourth-largest weather radar network in the world, with more than 60 radars. But what's inside those big golf ball shapes, and how do weather radars work?

Met Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blsc7GahthY

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