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Speaker 2: Mum, why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 3: It's cottage cheese, honey. And I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Did the dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 5: When when we get there, well, we've got to fix
Speaker 5: the car first, but there's someone coming to help us.
Speaker 2: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 3: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's a van now.
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Speaker 8: Oh hey, it's that lady who's both a stranger and
Speaker 8: also your Internet dad. Ali Ward back with a light
Speaker 8: and a fluffy episode of Ologies. Ooh, things are getting
Speaker 8: dark and stormy, or maybe puffy and beautiful and shaped
Speaker 8: like a dinosaur. Because it's Clouds and this is smologies
Speaker 8: and smologies are versions of our classic episodes that we've
Speaker 8: edited down to be shorter, and we've also taken out
Speaker 8: any language that might be objectionable, so it's safe for
Speaker 8: kids and it's safe for all ages. If you are
Speaker 8: looking for the full version of Clouds and you've got
Speaker 8: some more time and you're not around Smologites, then the
Speaker 8: full length version is linked in the show notes. But
Speaker 8: if you're here for the smaller, shorter episodes that are grated, enjoy. Okay,
Speaker 8: this is a big one. It has been looming overhead
Speaker 8: since the first time I encountered a.
Speaker 7: List of possible ologies.
Speaker 8: This is over a decade ago, and I remember seeing
Speaker 8: nephology and thinking immediately like.
Speaker 7: Who does that? Who is one?
Speaker 8: And it was on my mind like a puffy thought
Speaker 8: bubble over my head so much that if you listen
Speaker 8: to the ending theme music, you will hear meteorology nephology.
Speaker 8: So of course you know, I'm bumped to get my
Speaker 8: head into the clouds for this.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 8: Nephology is the study of clouds. Okay, this is very
Speaker 8: much a real word. It can mean a scientist of
Speaker 8: clouds or just someone who likes to gaze up and
Speaker 8: look at the clouds and would hug a cloud if
Speaker 8: they could, and is like clouds are tight.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 8: Nef comes from the Greek for cloud straight up. But
Speaker 8: it is not to be confused with the objects of nephrology,
Speaker 8: which has an R in it that means the kidneys,
Speaker 8: your p organs, which we will explore another time.
Speaker 7: I promise. Okay.
Speaker 8: So this ologist, this nephologist, I happened upon on Twitter
Speaker 8: and she was like, hey, me up for that cloud chat.
Speaker 8: Anytime I was thrilled, I was nervous. She came over
Speaker 8: to my house. We sat on my couch with my
Speaker 8: sleeping indoor raccoon Grammy just inches away, and we looked
Speaker 8: out of the atmosphere while we discussed what is a cloud?
Speaker 8: What are they called?
Speaker 7: And why?
Speaker 8: What ancient weather adages can we actually rely on diamond
Speaker 8: rain and clouds shaped like everything under the sun with
Speaker 8: atmospheric scientist professional cloud looker at her and nephologist doctor
Speaker 8: Rachel Storer.
Speaker 4: Knowlogious alogy minology knowlogist.
Speaker 8: Do you know that you are a nephologist?
Speaker 7: I didn't until you said that word.
Speaker 8: I was going to ask if people call you a
Speaker 8: nephrologis a lot but they don't even call you an apologist.
Speaker 7: Oh, nobody calls me that.
Speaker 5: No, some of my friends call me a cloud doctor,
Speaker 5: which I use that one for some of my like
Speaker 5: social media and stuff.
Speaker 7: I just think that sounds neat a doctor cloud.
Speaker 8: Let's get to the nitty gritty.
Speaker 7: What is a cloud?
Speaker 8: What is it?
Speaker 7: It's water in the air. It is it is a
Speaker 7: lot of water in the air. Okay, so if you
Speaker 7: like look at just a regular cloud.
Speaker 5: I think I'm going to probably get the numbers wrong,
Speaker 5: but it's literally can be like a ton.
Speaker 7: Of water in a cloud, but the droplets are just so.
Speaker 5: So small, and you know, they just can like hang
Speaker 5: out there in the air and the light.
Speaker 7: Reflects off of them, and there's enough of them that
Speaker 7: we see it as white or gray or whatever.
Speaker 8: So you are looking at a cloud and you're like,
Speaker 8: it's puffy, it's light, it's in the air, and it's
Speaker 8: just an absolute ton of water above your head. And
Speaker 8: the reason it's a cloud and not a puddle is
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, so all the droplets are really small, I mean
Speaker 5: literally like tens of microns across it is a cloud droplet,
Speaker 5: and so it's just so light, it has so little
Speaker 5: mass that just like the little bits of air moving
Speaker 5: up and around are enough to sort of keep it
Speaker 5: in place, and so it's you know, it's not until
Speaker 5: the drop gets big enough, until it forms like a
Speaker 5: rain droplet, that it's sort of heavy enough to fall
Speaker 5: on its own.
Speaker 8: So there is a tipping point obviously in clouds where
Speaker 8: there's enough water vapor that condenses, where the droplets can't
Speaker 8: be buoyed by the air underneath it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sort of like eventually there's just enough water, and
Speaker 5: you know, the more water you have in a cloud,
Speaker 5: the more the water is gonna bump against other water
Speaker 5: droplets and they start to stick together, and you know,
Speaker 5: water vaple condense directly onto water droplets, and they'll grow
Speaker 5: as long as it's moist enough and then yeah, eventually
Speaker 5: the drops will get big enough that they'll fall.
Speaker 8: Oh okay, so let's talk about shapes of clouds.
Speaker 5: Okay, The sort of two main type set are stratus
Speaker 5: and cumulus. And so the sort of difference there is
Speaker 5: that as clouds are convective, which means that they form
Speaker 5: because there's air that's sort of warmer than its surroundings
Speaker 5: and it bubbles up like like you would have bubbles
Speaker 5: and boiling.
Speaker 7: Water or whatever. You just you have air that bubbles up.
Speaker 5: And so that's sort of why they tend to be
Speaker 5: like puffy and bumpy on the top and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: The sky's always have the fluffy clouds, and those are
Speaker 5: the ones that tend to if you're going to have
Speaker 5: storms that those are convective clouds.
Speaker 8: So those are the puffy, fluffy yeah, cotten candy clouds
Speaker 8: are like cumulus. And then there's this stratus.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so stratus literally the word like strata means layer,
Speaker 5: So stratus clouds are generally layered, which means that they're
Speaker 5: sort of forming from sort of a larger area that's
Speaker 5: rising a lot more slowly. So like over the ocean,
Speaker 5: where things are generally sort of similar everywhere, then you
Speaker 5: tend to get like strato cumulus over the ocean, or
Speaker 5: if it's like a really rainy, drizzly day a lot
Speaker 5: of times that will be like there'll be like a
Speaker 5: front coming through that's sort of larger, and so there's,
Speaker 5: you know, a big air mass that's just sort of
Speaker 5: moving slowly up, and so you get sort of these flat,
Speaker 5: sort of layered clouds.
Speaker 8: Oh so it's like a pancake is a stratus cloud
Speaker 8: and a cumulus is a muffin.
Speaker 7: Yes, okay, yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 8: And then I guess maybe would a strato cumulus be
Speaker 8: like a waffle?
Speaker 7: Sure? Okay, why not?
Speaker 8: So hungry? And so then okay, what are some other
Speaker 8: types of clouds? Like what is a like a pyroclastic
Speaker 8: cloud or a lenticular?
Speaker 7: Like what are all these terms?
Speaker 5: So pyrocumulus clouds are really cool and also terrifying and
Speaker 5: kind of sad because they're what happens when you have
Speaker 5: fire pyro Right, So pyrocumulus is basically, when you get
Speaker 5: so much heat from the fire that it forces convection
Speaker 5: on its own ps.
Speaker 8: Why should anyone care about the meaning of convection when
Speaker 8: it's not being used to describe an oven that's making
Speaker 8: me cookies. Well, convection just means a circular current or
Speaker 8: gas or liquid is less dense and it rises, and
Speaker 8: then the cooler stuff is more dense and it falls.
Speaker 8: And this happens in weather patterns a bunch because the
Speaker 8: surface of the earth is warm, so it heats air.
Speaker 8: That air rises, and then the cooler air above it
Speaker 8: falls like that gets heated by the earth that rises,
Speaker 8: et cetera, et cetera, which, let's be honest, is almost
Speaker 8: as cool as cookies. That's pretty interesting. Now. Pyrocumulus or
Speaker 8: phlammogenitis clouds have terrible names, but they look like fluffy, puffy,
Speaker 8: billowy pillowy steam clouds.
Speaker 5: And so you get these are like really strong, like
Speaker 5: really crazy colorflowery, convectiony.
Speaker 7: Sort of clouds that form.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've seen them here over the mountains sometimes
Speaker 5: occasionally when we've gone bad fires.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, what about a lenticular cloud?
Speaker 5: But lenticular clouds are awesome. Okay, But a lenticular cloud
Speaker 5: is a wave cloud. So it forms when air is
Speaker 5: forced over a mountain. Oh and air, So if the
Speaker 5: air atmosphere in general is kind of stable, then when
Speaker 5: air goes up, it'll sort of go back down again,
Speaker 5: and it'll go sort of up and down in like
Speaker 5: this like large wave, and in the parts where it
Speaker 5: goes up, a cloud will form if you know conditions
Speaker 5: are right, and so you get sort of this.
Speaker 7: There are these people call them like UFO clouds.
Speaker 5: A lot of times they have almost this upho shape
Speaker 5: to them because they just form in the little top
Speaker 5: part of this wave, and so you get all these
Speaker 5: really cool and sometimes they build up on top of
Speaker 5: each other. When I lived in Colorado, we used to
Speaker 5: get the most amazing lenticular clouds. And also, like you
Speaker 5: if you ever look at like pictures of like Mountaineer
Speaker 5: and Washington, sometimes they'll form like on top of the
Speaker 5: mountain and you'll get this like a really cool like
Speaker 5: layered It's hard.
Speaker 7: To describe with just words, but oh, I'm going to
Speaker 7: look it up.
Speaker 8: Yeah, y'all, are you sitting have you seen a lenticular cloud?
Speaker 8: They look like sky pancakes or UFOs or like stacks
Speaker 8: of hanuka gelp. And the word lenticular comes from lens
Speaker 8: shaped like a bulging disc.
Speaker 7: Of a lens. Also, the word lens are.
Speaker 8: You even capable of dealing with this right now?
Speaker 7: I don't think you are.
Speaker 8: It comes from the Latin for lentil. So these giant
Speaker 8: disk like clouds are like big lentil pillows. And I'll
Speaker 8: be honest, I think I just crossed the line to
Speaker 8: wanting to join the cloud Appreciation Society, which is a
Speaker 8: real thing. You mentioned nimbus and anvil clouds.
Speaker 7: What are those? Yeah, So nimbus means rain, Oh it does. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I never knew that. I did not know that.
Speaker 8: Okay, wow, that's that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Okay, So cumulo nimbus is like a thunderstorm basically, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's And then anvil clouds are so literally like the
Speaker 5: top of the troposphere is called the tropopause, and then
Speaker 5: above that is the stratosphere, and that layer of that
Speaker 5: transition is really really stable, so air that goes up
Speaker 5: can't really go farther than that, And so when you
Speaker 5: have a storm cloud that goes up, it goes to
Speaker 5: the tropopause and the air doesn't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 7: The clouds don't have anywhere to go, and.
Speaker 5: So they spread out and that's where and it's they're
Speaker 5: called anvil clouds because if you look at the cheape
Speaker 5: of them, where they sort of like peak out and
Speaker 5: point out or whatever.
Speaker 7: They look sort of like an anvil. Oh my god, eh.
Speaker 8: Okay, quick aside. I looked them up, and these thunderstorms
Speaker 8: do in fact look like anvils. And their full name
Speaker 8: is cumulonimbus incus, and the cumulo means heaped, so they're
Speaker 8: like a bunch of heaps of whip cream. And the
Speaker 8: nimbus means rainstorm, and incus in Latin just means anvil.
Speaker 8: So when this rising air hits the tropopause, that's the
Speaker 8: boundary between the lowest level of our atmosphere and the
Speaker 8: next level stratosphere. So the cloud hits that and it's like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 8: that's a ceiling. Okay, I'm just gonna casually fan out.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna act normal. Hopefully nobody noticed. It doesn't even
Speaker 8: know how cool it is. How does the cloud even form?
Speaker 5: You need the sort of basics that you need our
Speaker 5: moisture and something for the moisture to condense onto and
Speaker 5: you need rising motion. So if you have air that's
Speaker 5: rising for some reason, like like for a convective cloud,
Speaker 5: it's because you of you know, sort of warm air
Speaker 5: that gets like buoyant, it's warmed in there around it.
Speaker 5: Or like I said, if you have air that's moving
Speaker 5: over front or over a mountain, then when the air
Speaker 5: moves up, as air goes up, the pressure goes down,
Speaker 5: and therefore the air gets colder.
Speaker 8: It's funny that something so beautiful that we see every
Speaker 8: day is so complicated, you know what I.
Speaker 5: Mean, And that's part of what I love about it. Right,
Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, due point, saturation, vapor pressure. You don't
Speaker 5: want to hear these things.
Speaker 8: Those are great those are great points.
Speaker 5: Okay, So you've heard the due point. So the dew
Speaker 5: point is the temperature at which water would condense given
Speaker 5: the amount of moisture that's currently in the air. Right,
Speaker 5: So the higher the dew point, the more humid it is. Okay,
Speaker 5: So as you raise air, it gets cooler, and so
Speaker 5: eventually it'll get to where it equals the due point
Speaker 5: of that sort of bit of air that's rising, Okay,
Speaker 5: And so at that point condensation can happen.
Speaker 8: Oh okay, okay, so quick recap. The dew point point
Speaker 8: is the temperature that water would start to condense, and
Speaker 8: a fifty degree due point is pretty comfy, but a
Speaker 8: seventy degree due point is just getting into swamp bottom territory.
Speaker 8: Now living in LA, this due point info was new
Speaker 8: to me. I had not the foggiest idea. And when
Speaker 8: does something become a cloud if it's foggy? If you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, is fog a cloud?
Speaker 7: Foggy is a cloud?
Speaker 5: Fog is just a cloud that's touching the ground. That's cool,
Speaker 5: literally all it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, how far does it have to go before it's
Speaker 7: a cloud?
Speaker 8: Just above your head like it is a cloud? Is
Speaker 8: that a philosophical or a meteorological question?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's it's one of those like
Speaker 5: fuzzy things because if it's funny like I you know,
Speaker 5: if you fly through a cloud, right, like when are
Speaker 5: you in the cloud?
Speaker 7: And when are you not in the cloud?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 7: Because there's like all those little.
Speaker 5: Water droplets and at some point it's enough that you
Speaker 5: can see it, But if you look at it with
Speaker 5: like a light r there's a lot more that you
Speaker 5: can't see because it's just too small or too sparse
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 7: You know, So at what point is it a cloud
Speaker 7: versus not a cloud?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: It's not like there's weird hard boundaries, right, so you know,
Speaker 5: touching the ground versus not, like, you know, give a
Speaker 5: wiggle room.
Speaker 8: Okay, do you look for faces in clouds? Do you
Speaker 8: still look for shapes and clouds?
Speaker 7: I don't really go out of my way too.
Speaker 5: I mean, if I see it, i'll you know, take
Speaker 5: note of it or whatever. But I tend to, I
Speaker 5: mean I tend to just sort of like stare agog
Speaker 5: at them, you know, just like, oh, it's so pretty.
Speaker 8: So we sat on my couch staring at the sky
Speaker 8: which was hazy with stripy things in it. They were
Speaker 8: probably stratus or cumulus.
Speaker 7: Right, what is the what are these today?
Speaker 8: These are stratus?
Speaker 7: Those are serious? What is it Cerrus? So Cirrus is
Speaker 7: really high up basically. Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: So there's sort of like three kind of like levels
Speaker 5: that we sort of think about in terms of like
Speaker 5: the heights of the cloud or whatever, and so the
Speaker 5: higher up ones are serious. The middle ones are like Alto,
Speaker 5: So we have like Alto stratus or whatever, and then
Speaker 5: the low ones are like just like the stratus or
Speaker 5: cumulus or you know, things like that.
Speaker 8: So you can tack on a prefix to tell you
Speaker 8: where in the sky it is. Yeah, I have so
Speaker 8: many Patreon questions.
Speaker 7: Are you ready? Yes?
Speaker 8: Okay, she is ready, But first before your Patreon questions.
Speaker 8: Each week we make a donation to a cause of
Speaker 8: theologists choosing, and this week, given the chat about pyrocumulus
Speaker 8: clouds and the wildfires in Australia, Rachel chose the World
Speaker 8: Wildlife Funds charity Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund, which
Speaker 8: supports veterinarians who are treating injured wildlife and provides food
Speaker 8: and water to critters in impacted regions. They use Koala
Speaker 8: detection dogs to help rescue them and to find other
Speaker 8: threatened species, and they get supplies to triage sites. So
Speaker 8: thank you Rachel for picking that, and that donation is
Speaker 8: made poss by sponsors of the show, which you may
Speaker 8: hear about.
Speaker 4: Now get value.
Speaker 1: You can't argue with Fat Tesco with their amazing club
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Speaker 2: Mom, why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 3: It's cottage cheese, honey. And I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Dogs in other countries speak different languages.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: When when we get there.
Speaker 3: Well, we've got to fix the car first, but there's
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Speaker 3: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh, there's the van.
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Speaker 6: For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes Aviva visit
Speaker 6: a Viva dan I eat to say fifty percent acceptance criteria,
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Speaker 8: Okay, back to your cloud questions. Okay, wants to know
Speaker 8: why your cloud's white.
Speaker 7: H Yeah.
Speaker 5: I started out this a little bit earlier, because you
Speaker 5: have a lot of droplets all in the same place,
Speaker 5: and the light bounces off of them and gets scattered.
Speaker 7: I guess they at an all the.
Speaker 5: Different directions, and so that that looks to our eyes
Speaker 5: like white.
Speaker 7: Basically, huh.
Speaker 8: First time question asker Navarro wants to know in places
Speaker 8: like Brooklyn, Big Up, it's overcast almost every day only
Speaker 8: in the winter. No visible sun, just a silvery white
Speaker 8: haze blanketing the entire sky. I actually got curious and
Speaker 8: googled it the other day. It turns out the explanation
Speaker 8: is nephological in nature, So can you please explain? And
Speaker 8: Jack Pourier and Courtney Ryan also have those questions about
Speaker 8: why is it cloud in the winter.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so, I mean I'm from Pennsylvania originally, and so
Speaker 7: I know the great skies of winter. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So a lot of it is just the kind of
Speaker 5: clouds that tend to form. So you know, a lot
Speaker 5: of like the stratus clouds, like I said, form when
Speaker 5: the atmosphere is stable, and so you get sort of
Speaker 5: like these blankety the stratus clouds. And in the winter generally,
Speaker 5: the type of weather that happens tends to be that
Speaker 5: type of weather. And we don't get a lot of
Speaker 5: sun right that you or know of the Earth's tilt
Speaker 5: is like such that we're not getting a lot of
Speaker 5: sun that time here, and so like the ground's not
Speaker 5: heating up, and so you don't get a lot of
Speaker 5: like convective clouds or anything like that, and so a
Speaker 5: lot of the stuff is just stratisy, overcast sort of stuff.
Speaker 8: I'm from San Francisco and I just call that sunscreen.
Speaker 8: I myself a foggy day off soap weather JKJK. The
Speaker 8: Skin Cancer Foundation says that up to eighty percent of
Speaker 8: the Sun's UV rays can pass right through clouds. So
Speaker 8: sunscreen just wants to be friends. It's here to help
Speaker 8: use it. A lot of people, of course, want to
Speaker 8: know about climate change. Emily, Elaine Laboard, Nikaia Wooten, who's
Speaker 8: a first time question asker, Haley Everson first time question asker.
Speaker 7: Also Sarah Does.
Speaker 8: And Jay, Julie bear Schminnie Thompson, and JANEU. They all
Speaker 8: want to know. In Haley's words, will climate change affect
Speaker 8: the clouds we see? And will certain types of clouds
Speaker 8: become less common or even go extinct?
Speaker 5: Oh okay, so it's a really complicated question that we
Speaker 5: don't really know the answer to, but I mean the
Speaker 5: short answer is yes, it will change things. As it
Speaker 5: gets warmer, sort of can like shift climate pattern around,
Speaker 5: and so you know, places that maybe weren't warm enough
Speaker 5: for there to be like a lot of conductive clouds
Speaker 5: might get more of those, or you can sort of
Speaker 5: shift where the main like storm track regions happen. And
Speaker 5: then there's also like over the oceans, there's like these
Speaker 5: large strata cumulus layers, and there's a lot of open
Speaker 5: questions as to how those will change. You know, there
Speaker 5: wouldn't be a cloud that would go extinct. That would
Speaker 5: make me very sad. But it's just it's more about
Speaker 5: like small shifts and the important thing there is like
Speaker 5: how that affects like the radiation, because there's all these
Speaker 5: feedbacks with warming, and how that affects the precipitation. Those
Speaker 5: are the sort of more important questions for you know
Speaker 5: what we actually want to understand.
Speaker 8: Yeah, are we going to get drier as we get warmer?
Speaker 7: So it depends on where you are.
Speaker 5: There's one of the sort of things that gets thrown
Speaker 5: a lot is this like rich get richer idea where
Speaker 5: the places that are moist will get moister and the
Speaker 5: places that are dry will get drier, which is unfortunate, right,
Speaker 5: Like you know, if you live in a place it's
Speaker 5: like prone to flooding, you don't want more of that,
Speaker 5: And if if you live in California, you don't want
Speaker 5: more drought. Like there's a lot of indications that that
Speaker 5: might be the way things are going.
Speaker 8: Hoof Yeah, I know that this is probably a question.
Speaker 8: You get a lot the difference between weather and climate. Yeah,
Speaker 8: do you have to explain that a lot?
Speaker 7: It's a first step.
Speaker 5: A lot of the time because people a lot of
Speaker 5: times when people have doubts about climate change, a lot
Speaker 5: of it is like they.
Speaker 7: Have all these distrust of the models that we use,
Speaker 7: or people will just be like, oh, it's it's cold,
Speaker 7: where's that global warming?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there's like a lot of really cool analogies
Speaker 5: for it that I try to remember. But so, like
Speaker 5: one of the obvious ones is that the climate is
Speaker 5: the clothes that are in your closet, and the weather
Speaker 5: is the clothes that you wear.
Speaker 7: Ha ha.
Speaker 8: That's a great way to get people to understand the difference,
Speaker 8: you know. Elizabeth Ganie wants to know why do cumulo
Speaker 8: nimbus clouds appear to us as such crazy colors like
Speaker 8: yellow and green and purple.
Speaker 5: So it depends on sort of what's in them and
Speaker 5: how the lightest gattering. Like the darker that a cloud
Speaker 5: is usually the more stuff, isn't it, right, because it's
Speaker 5: blocking the light above it. Like if it's really dark overhead,
Speaker 5: there's sort of like more moisture in that cloud, right,
Speaker 5: Like if it rains.
Speaker 7: The clouds overhead are usually like really dark gray.
Speaker 5: Sometimes cumulinimous cloud will tend to look greenish, and often
Speaker 5: that means that there's hail in it.
Speaker 7: What because of just the hail.
Speaker 5: Is really big and it just scatters light in a
Speaker 5: different way. And so a lot of times, like if
Speaker 5: there's hail in a cloud, it'll have this sort.
Speaker 7: Of greenish tinge to it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then if you get clouds like on the horizon,
Speaker 5: it all you get all sorts of different color effects
Speaker 5: because of the angle of the light and the way
Speaker 5: that it scatters and stuff.
Speaker 8: Eliza Gaston wants to know how much truth is there
Speaker 8: in the saying red sales at night sailors to light,
Speaker 8: red sales in the morn sailors be warned. You ever
Speaker 8: heard that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've heard red skies at night sailors delight light.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the There is actually some truth to it,
Speaker 5: and it has to do with the kind of clouds
Speaker 5: that you get.
Speaker 7: And it's like.
Speaker 5: If you have like an approaching weather system versus something
Speaker 5: that's just passed, where you'll see like cirrus clouds in
Speaker 5: the way that the light scatters off of them and
Speaker 5: stuff like that.
Speaker 8: So this adage is attributed to everyone from Shakespeare to
Speaker 8: Jesus literally, and the logic behind it is to quote
Speaker 8: the Library of Congress. When we see a red sky
Speaker 8: at night, this means that the setting sun is sending
Speaker 8: its light through a high concentration of dust particles, and
Speaker 8: this usually indicates a high pressure and stable air coming
Speaker 8: in from the west. Basically, good weather will follow, and
Speaker 8: a red sunrise can mean that good weather has passed.
Speaker 8: And if it's deep, fiery red, there may be a
Speaker 8: lot of water in the atmosphere. End quote. So red
Speaker 8: skies in the morning, gather your galoshes, which means, if
Speaker 8: you live in la you can start canceling your plants.
Speaker 8: We don't do rain. Lauren Kiperl wants to know how
Speaker 8: heavy does a cloud need to be before it rains.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's not necessarily about the heaviness of the cloud.
Speaker 5: It's about the heaviness of the drops.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 5: There has to be enough water so that like rain
Speaker 5: can form. You know, a rain drop that has to
Speaker 5: be certain sort of a certain size before it's enough
Speaker 5: heavy enough to fall through their ballpark. Like a rain
Speaker 5: drop is like I don't know, a millimeter or something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 8: Okayish oh. Pandora two says that my son Shay who's
Speaker 8: nine and is a first time asker wants to know
Speaker 8: why are clouds never square?
Speaker 7: Oh that's neat. I like that kids ask the best questions.
Speaker 5: Because I would say probably because of like turbulence and
Speaker 5: arizonays moving around and stuff like that. Plus there's like
Speaker 5: all this sort of like chaotic stuff that happens on
Speaker 5: the small scale and clouds where you know, just because
Speaker 5: you have sort of similar conditions right here, they won't
Speaker 5: be exactly the same ten feet away, and so maybe
Speaker 5: you'll get a little bit more cloud here than you
Speaker 5: get there, and it's all kind of uneven.
Speaker 8: But they're flat on the bottom.
Speaker 7: They're pretty flat in the bottom.
Speaker 8: Melissa Croce wants to know, first time question asker, what
Speaker 8: do we know about clouds on other planets? If anything?
Speaker 8: Are there different types of clouds on those planets?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the neat thing about clouds on other planets
Speaker 5: is that a lot of them aren't water clouds, which
Speaker 5: is like just sort of mind boggling to think about,
Speaker 5: because the temperatures are like so much colder, for instance,
Speaker 5: that you can get like.
Speaker 7: Methane clouds stuff like that. Yeah, so that's pretty neat.
Speaker 8: Okay, I checked into this and NASA JPL researchers have
Speaker 8: calculated that in the methane stormy regions of Saturn, it
Speaker 8: could rain up to two point two million pounds of
Speaker 8: diamonds annually. You have a crush on Saturn, now, don't you.
Speaker 8: If you like it, you can have to put a
Speaker 8: ring on it. Rings. Okay. You know what's funny about
Speaker 8: that is when I picture raining diamonds, I picture it
Speaker 8: like cut gemstones and not just rocks.
Speaker 7: Like I picture that.
Speaker 5: There's an episode of Doctor Who I think where there's
Speaker 5: like something like that, some sort of diamond planet, like
Speaker 5: they're already.
Speaker 7: Cut in polish, like the diamond mode. I picture the
Speaker 7: same thing.
Speaker 8: And you're like, ow ow, what do you love the
Speaker 8: most about clouds or your work or about being a nephologist,
Speaker 8: which you know know you are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I just love that, like on a
Speaker 5: day when my work is making me crumpy, that I
Speaker 5: can just go outside and look at the sky and
Speaker 5: be like, oh, right, that's the thing that I'm studying,
Speaker 5: like this cool thing. And you know, I get to
Speaker 5: work with other people who get excited.
Speaker 7: About it too.
Speaker 5: Like the few days of the year that we do
Speaker 5: get a storm come through, there's like a couple of
Speaker 5: us that are like really like the weather we needs
Speaker 5: in the group. That'll be like outside, like huddled on
Speaker 5: the side, like, oh my gosh, there's actual weather.
Speaker 8: Well, I would say that you were a ray of sunshine,
Speaker 8: but you're really I feel like that's an insult in
Speaker 8: your work. So you're just very You're a very dense
Speaker 8: and deep, dark, stormy cloud.
Speaker 7: And I mean that as a compliment.
Speaker 8: Okay, that's the best kind of cloud, right, it's I
Speaker 8: love them so as always meet smart people and then
Speaker 8: invite them and to ask them questions. And we're at
Speaker 8: ologies on Twitter, Come be friends with us on that
Speaker 8: and on Instagram We're at ologies. Also linked is aliwar
Speaker 8: dot com slash Asmologies, which has dozens more kids Safe
Speaker 8: and Order episodes you can blaze through. And thank you
Speaker 8: Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and Shared Sleeper of mind
Speaker 8: gem Media for editing those, as well as Zeke Rodriguez
Speaker 8: Thomas and it says we like to keep things small
Speaker 8: around here. The rest of the credits are in the
Speaker 8: show notes And if you stick around until the end
Speaker 8: of the episode, I give you a piece of advice,
Speaker 8: And this week's advice is to have a little note
Speaker 8: going when you hear someone mention that they like something
Speaker 8: and you can jot it down. That way, when their
Speaker 8: birthday rolls around or they need a little surprise treat
Speaker 8: to make their day, you say, oh, that's right, they
Speaker 8: love bubblegum, or oh that's right, unicorn stickers are their favorite.
Speaker 8: That way, in the moment, you don't have to rack
Speaker 8: your brain for something to get them. I keep a
Speaker 8: list going of things that my loved ones like. That
Speaker 8: way I remember when their birthday comes around where to
Speaker 8: start when it comes to a gift. Sometimes I make
Speaker 8: a little list of things that I want a couple
Speaker 8: weeks before my birthday. That way, if anyone asked me
Speaker 8: what I want for my birthday, say, oh, I remember,
Speaker 8: and there are a few little tidy treats that I'd like.
Speaker 7: Okay, bybye.
Speaker 4: Our Saugy.
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