How can there by different types of clouds in the same area?

Question

Yesterday, the sky has thin whispy clouds along side of heavy rain clouds. What causes moisture to stick together in the atmosphere and how can the same area of atmoshpere support two different types of clouds?

Answer 1

It is not uncommon to have five or six different cloud types visible at the same time. Clouds generally are classed by the height where they are formed (they can be composed of either liquid droplets or ice crystals) and the method by which they are formed. Usually this can be either thermal (heat) or mechanical lifting (over a mountain barrier or up slope) or due to a wide area of lift caused by a meteorological conditions. Atmospheric instability causes other types as well. To see the most varied cloud conditions possible, go to the mountains when thunderstorms are occurring over the mountains. It would be unusual for a trained weather observer to NOT be able to point out 10 to 20 different cloud types and sub types at any given moment.

Answer 2

As you probably already know, the atmosphere is made up of layers. Different conditions can occor at different altitudes. It could be hot and dry on the ground, and very cold and relatively moist up higher, which is why you'll sometimes get clouds even over a desert. Diffrerent conditions; wind speeds, humidities, updrafts and preassure systems moving over and under each other all alter the kind of cloud that forms. It could seem that the clouds are next to each other from the ground, as after a while depth perception can kind of peter out.

Answer 3

Remember, the atm is 3 dimensional. The same conditions don't always exist above and below, left and right. Slight differences in temp, pressure, heat, light, wind, moisture, etc will produce different clouds in the same region

Answer 4

The different types of clouds we see at a place would not have formed in the same place.They might have been formed at different places and brought to a particular place by upper winds.The upper winds always do not blow from the same direction.They may be blowing from different directions at different levels.You can sometimes see that one layer of cloud moving in one direction and the next layer of cloud above it moving in the opposite direction.
Further the clouds also form at different heights at different places due to difference in altitude,temperature ,moisture and prevailing ground winds in addition to topography of the place(mountains,hills etc).
Based on height at which clouds form,they are classfied into three categories.They are low,medium and high clouds.
As stated above, all the clouds formed at different layers over different places are sometimes brought to a particular place by upper winds and you see all types of clouds.
As the amount of moisture at different altitudes over the same place varies, one or more low, medium and high clouds may sometimes form over the same place.