What makes some clouds turn grey/black?

Question

Some clouds are white, but some are grey or black.. what makes them change colour like this?

Answer 1

A cloud needs to be lit by the sun to appear white. When there's a lot of clouds, they block the sunlight and appear grey or even darker.

Answer 2

colour

Answer 3

the more the water droplets, the more opaque the cloud becomes,

during a thunder storm, the clouds r fulll of water, so they block the sun

but during a sunny season, the water content is less and so they appear less opaque or as u say - white.

Answer 4

They are thick enough to block out some or most of the light. If you see them from the same side the sun's shining on they would be white.

Answer 5

Shadow. The thicker the cloud the more sunlight is stopped from coming through so the cloud appears darker.  

Answer 6

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals floating in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. A cloud is also a visible mass attracted by gravity (clouds can also occur as masses of material in interstellar space, where they are called interstellar clouds and nebulae.) The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology.

On Earth the condensing substance is typically water vapor, which forms small droplets or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths: they thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the gases, hence the gray or even sometimes dark appearance of the clouds at their base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background, and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may be colored accordingly. In the near-infrared range, clouds would appear darker because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.



Clouds can cast shadows

Clouds and cloud bow above PacificClouds are divided into two general categories: layered and convective. These are named stratus clouds (or stratiform, the Latin stratus means "layer") and cumulus clouds (or cumuliform; cumulus means "piled up"). These two cloud types are divided into four more groups that distinguish the cloud's altitude. Clouds are classified by the cloud base height, not the cloud top. This system was proposed by Luke Howard in 1802 in a presentation to the Askesian Society

Answer 7

My mum paints them.

- what do you think moron.

obviously persipitation ;)