How can you tell how far away the clouds are?

Question

If I'm sitting on the porch watching the little storm clouds forming, how can I tell how far away the actual storm is. I'm not sure what it is about the area I live in, but storms seem to either form here from nothing, or completely die out as they get here. I live in petrolia, PA.

I've looked at the radar before and it shows that some of these storms I see are 10 or even 20 miles from here in real life.

I find it hard to believe that I can see a cloud that far away. Is this true?

Answer 1

Study the different types of clouds.  Then you will know what type's are associated with what type of weather, and how high up or far away they are.  Theirs just too much to explain.  Self education is key!

Answer 2

To estimate the distance of the clouds is extremely difficult because they don't have anything you can relate the scale to.

As a private pilot, when I fly under the visual rule, I must keep to a certain distance from the clouds. Actually, 1,000 feet under them. But how to know?

When you see clouds far away, which part of them do you see? A thunderstorm cloud (called towering cumulus) can be as high as 7 miles, all the way to the tropopause.

So, I don't think it is strange that you see such clouds if they are 10 to 20 miles away.

Answer 3

You can calculate how far away a thunderstorm is by counting seconds passed between seeing the flash of lightning and when you hear the thunder.  For every 5 seconds that you count, the storm is a mile away, so if you see a lightning flash and hear thunder 10 seconds later, the storm is about 2 miles away.

You can calculate how high the cloud base is by knowing what the dew point is at your location.  The dew point is the temperature that the water vapor in the air will condense into a liquid or Fog, and since the temperature decreases by about 4.5 degrees for every 1000 feet you go up, this can be calculated by subtracting the temperature from the dew point, dividing it by 4.5, then multiplying that by 1000, and adding the result by your height above sea level.

As for estimating the distance a storm is away from your location this is a bit tougher.  On flat terrain with no obstacles you can see about 30 miles to the horizon.  If you are elevated above the surrounding terrain, you can see further, and how much further depends on how high you are.

Another factor will also be the height of the storm clouds.  Your average sized thunderstorm can reach heights of 30,000 to 40,000 feet in the sky--that's five miles high, not including how high the cloud base is!  Severe storms can reach up to 60,000 or more feet in vertical height.  Our highest American mountain ranges are only about 15,000 feet high, and you probably know that you can see mountain ranges from quite a distance away.

Using a calculation program I have on my PC, a six foot tall person who is standing on a boat in the ocean can see an object that is 5,000 feet high in the air from 103 miles away!  So that ought to give you some idea as to how far away you can see a storm coming from if you have a perfectly clear view to the horizon.

Answer 4

10 miles is nothing, in the scope of T-storms. Figure that those bad boys may be anywhere from 30,000 feet to 60,000 feet high!

You very well may be seeing those 10-20 mile-away storms, although from that distance you'd be able to see a portion (at least) of the cumulonimbus' anvil. You'd be looking at the stormcloud's white, poofy shape itself, not the dark grey underside of it.

Ya gotta know what you're looking at to tell for sure. But yes- INDEED- one can see a t-storm that is 10-20 miles away.

Answer 5

depending on the distance, they use parallax, cepheid variables, standard candles like supernovae, and red shift. esa's gaia mission, due for launch in 2011, will be able to measure parallax in the magellanic clouds. among other things, this will help refine our calibrations of other measurement tools.

this is really basic astrophysics.

Answer 6

using an inferade sattelite. the darker colored ones are higher into the atmosphere. there white ones are the lowest to the ground

Answer 7

no you cant but why would you want to know?