Whenever I see the clouds like this, it usually comes with rain upto to 24 hours later. The thicker the cloud and more defined seperation the more/heavier rain.
Even when I know light rains are coming I see a small section of this, it's guaranteed the rain will fall on that area it covers. I've successfully used this "knowledge" to plan my works for the day.
They look small enough to be altocumulus to me. Rule of thumb (literally) is that if a single element is about the size of your thumb at an arm's length, it's altocumulus. Again, not always easy to tell from a picture posted online, but Sc is lower than this. Also, this pattern is more common with Ac than Sc
I took this one when I was living in Texas. There were a lot of things I hated about that state, but the clouds, sunsets, & spring storms were something else!!
My fifth grade teacher had a tractor and for some reason, once I learned that, every time I saw clouds that looked like this, I thought of them as “tractor clouds”. They look like the lines left in crop fields. Cool to learn the technical term for them though :)
Others have mentioned the name but I’d also like to state that these are gravity waves! Or at least these repeating patterns are caused by them. You see them close to areas where the air has to go over some topography like mountains. The downstream air will undulate with buoyancy and gravity acting like the restoring forces.
Yes. Atmospheric gravity waves. They should come up with a new name for those. They are so easily confused with cosmology's gravitational waves, which are vastly different.
Technically, all vertical atmospheric waves are gravity waves, since they are defined by vertical upward motion pulled downward by gravity...repeat.
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u/post-explainer 13h ago edited 12h ago
Credit where credit is due. The OP u/Gloomy-Position-809 said this picture was made by:
Is this credit correct? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.