How fast do clouds go

Election Results. Your Vote Virginia. Hometown Stories Podcasts. Contact Us. Meet the Team. Gray Media Group Careers. Nightly Spanish Newscast. Submit Photos and Videos. Gray DC Bureau. Investigate TV. Latest Newscasts. How far and how fast do clouds travel? By Chief Meteorologist Brent Watts. Published: May. Share on Facebook. Temperature inversion layers, also called thermal inversions, occur when the natural atmospheric heat gradient is reversed. Usually, the air adjacent to the ground is relatively warm, and it gets colder as the altitude increases.

I have been a witness to numerous thermal inversions, and I believe that you have too. It could be you were just unaware when it happened. Have you ever risen only to find a blanket of fog laying low in your yard and dew on the grass? A clear example of a thermal inversion. When the wind starts blowing or the atmospheric temperature heats up, the temperature inversion will disperse.

A dynamic lift happens when two air masses of varying temperatures meet. The denser air mass lifts its lighter counterpart higher into the sky. The wind can blow a warm air mass up and over a mountain, where it will rise and cool as a result. From giant palls rising high up in the sky to thin wisps sneaking between the stars at night, clouds come in shapes and sizes. Their ever-changing characteristics make them brilliant food for thought as they feed our imagination.

But how are clouds formed? Clouds are formed when the cloud condensation nuclei dirt, sea salt, or dust combine and attract water vapor. When the nuclei ascend, the vapor condenses and forms ice that eventually becomes cloud droplets. These globules are very light, which makes them accumulate as they float about. Once they mix with air, they become the cottony formations that we usually see suspended in the atmosphere.

Clouds come from tiny droplets of water which fall eventually, but very slowly as rain or snow. Clouds are generally found in the closest layer of the atmosphere to the Earth. As these cottony puffs rise and fall, they appear in fathomless variations. Winds higher in altitude are stronger and help to determine weather patterns.

The wind moves like a river in the sky. This is known as the jet stream and it is largely responsible for our weather and climate. The very rising of a warm, humid air mass cooling and condensing as it ascends in the atmosphere is the catalyst for cloud creation. Water droplets within the air mass constrict and become dense.

The weight of the water droplets cannot be held and precipitation falls unless winds get to the cloud-first. Losing moisture causes the cloud to dissolve into the warmer air closer to the Earth, which evaporates any remaining moisture and erases the cloud altogether. Upper-level winds, like the jet stream, guide the horizontal movement of clouds. Cirrus clouds typically indicate this wind direction. Warm and cold fronts also affect cloud movement as they are defined by the movement of the air masses behind them.

During a cold front, cold air invades and replaces a warm air mass in a given area. The opposite happens in a warm front. The movement of these masses generates wind that affects cloud movement, not just horizontally, but vertically as well. Not on their own at least.