the.com/cumulus
the puffy daydream of clouds, secretly a violent updraft wearing a cute disguise
means A puffy, cotton-like cloud with a flat base and rounded, billowing tops, formed by rising warm air.
from Straight from Latin cumulus, meaning 'a heap' or 'pile' — the same root that gives English 'accumulate' (to heap up). When 19th-century meteorologist Luke Howard set out to name the clouds, he reached for Latin to make a tidy international vocabulary, and a heaped-up cloud became, fittingly, a heap.
- name origin
- Latin for heap or pile
- weight
- average one weighs over a million pounds
- thermal born
- forms where warm air punches upward
- angry upgrade
- can mutate into thunderstorm towers
- flat bottoms
- bases mark exact dew point altitude
for instance
fair weather cumulus — common puffy white clouds that form on sunny days with flat bases, typically 3,000-6,000 feet altitude
cumulonimbus — towering thunderstorm cloud that can reach 40,000+ feet, produces heavy rain, hail, and tornadoes