cirrostratus

Meteorol a uniform layer of cloud above about 6000 metres (20 000 feet)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

cirrostratus (Cs)

These clouds form typically as a thin whitish sheet covering a major portion of the sky. They may be very thin or form a definite sheet. They are responsible for forming halos around the sun and the moon. Cirrostratus clouds contain ice crystals or needles of ice. Some of the symbols for cirrostratus clouds on weather maps are

and

. The first symbol indicates that the amount of cirrostratus is not increasing, whereas the second symbol means that the sky is overcast with cirrostratus.

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References in periodicals archive

CIRROSTRATUS is a pale, whitish sheet of cloud that can cover the whole sky.

Reading the Sky: Learn how to identify and interpret clouds to predict weather in your area

Most of the clouds here tend to be stratiform--stratocumulus, altostratus, and cirrostratus. Sometimes embedded showers and storms will develop, while cold fronts and cumuliform clouds predominate, with showery precipitation.

Fronts

In this study, the ANN classifier divided cloud/ surface into seven categories: sea, stratocumulus and altocumulus, mixed cloud, altostratus and nimbostratus, cirrostratus, thick cirrus, and cumulonimbus using 2864 cloud samples manually collected by two experienced meteorologists in June, July, and August in 2007 from three FY-2C channels' (IR1,10.3-11.3 [micro]m; IR2,11.5-12.5 [micro]m; and WV 6.37.6 [micro]m) imagery.

Automatic tracking and characterization of cumulonimbus clouds from FY-2C geostationary meteorological satellite images

Divided into sections devoted to low, middle, and high clouds, this field guide to the skies includes such details as the ferocious, storm-producing capabilities of the cumulonimbus, the UFO-like appearance of the altocumulus lenticularis, and the halo-forming tendencies of the cirrostratus. Finally, the author describes his voyage to Australia to view the cloudspotter's ultimate find, a cloud known as the morning glory, which can stretch as far as 600 miles across the sky.

The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds

local time, a cirrostratus cloud formed and quickly expanded above us.

Adventure on the high seas