Type of clouds when sky is overcast?

Question

When the sky is completely overcast in the winter and it is NOT raining are the clouds cirrus? thanks

Answer 1

The word "stratus"means layer, the word "cumulus" means "heaped". Overcast skies involve stratiform clouds. These can be stratus, stratocumulus, altostratus or cirrostratus.

Nimbostratus, by definition, means it is raining (nimbus means rain in Latin). It can also rain from thick but not thin altostratus.

"There are 14 main cloud types, "

There are ten main cloud types:
Low cloud - stratus, stratocumulus, cumulus, cumulonimbus
Middle cloud - altostratus, altocumulus, nimbostratus
High cloud - cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus.

These ten cloud types are further divided into nine types of low cloud, nine middle and nine high for international weather reporting.

Answer 2

I work at an airport weather station and most of my job is reporting cloud types, heights and amounts. The rest of it is mainly done by machines: temperature, wind, pressure, etc. I do not claim to be an 'expert', I am not a meteorologist, but reporting the clouds has been my job for 8 or 9 years now.

The sky can be overcast at any height, and with a variety of cloud types. It may indeed be cirrus, but to be honest, of all the overcast conditions I report, it is very rarely all cirrus. Sometimes you will see cirrus thicken and spread through the day until it covers everything. In this case then, it will be called cirrostratus and this is the cloud type that gives you a halo around the moon or sun.

Pardon me for going on here, but you do seem to have an interest in understanding this. There are 14 main cloud types, and each of them falls under one of the 3 etages or height groups: low, which is 0-6500 feet, mid, which is 6500-20000, and high which is 20,000 and up. Cirrus clouds are the high ones, and this is the only etage whose clouds NEVER give you any weather.

Like I said, I measure cloud heights and they can be pretty low. Almost on the ground sometimes, or they may be miles up. Anyway, the brief answer to your question is 'likely not, it is most probably at a lower level and of a different type, but if there is any weather, it is not coming from cirrus'

Answer 3

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RE:
Type of clouds when sky is overcast?
When the sky is completely overcast in the winter and it is NOT raining are the clouds cirrus? thanks

Answer 4

Stratus.