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50 free Cloud trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free cloud trivia questions with answers. This cloud trivia quiz is mostly about the ones in the sky: who named them and when, what cirrus, cumulus, stratus and nimbus mean in Latin, how tall a thunderstorm can grow, why lenticular clouds get reported as UFOs, where the highest clouds on Earth form, what a contrail is, how cloud seeding works and how fog differs from mist. It also visits the clouds of Venus, Mars and Jupiter and the strange formations of the 2017 International Cloud Atlas. Because 'the cloud' now also means someone else's computer, a handful of questions cover cloud computing: where the term came from and which company launched S3 and EC2 in 2006. Easy questions suit science classes and family quizzes; the harder ones on altitudes, dates and Latin will test weather geeks. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which amateur meteorologist proposed the Latin cloud-naming system in 1802?
Luke Howard
He was a London chemical manufacturer by trade; Goethe was so taken with the scheme he wrote four cloud poems dedicated to him.
Q 02How many basic cloud genera does the modern international classification recognise?
Ten
They come from five physical forms sorted by altitude: sheets, heaps, rolls, towers and wisps.
Q 03What does the Latin word 'cumulus' mean?
Heap or pile
Small flat-bottomed cumulus humilis clouds are the classic sign of fair weather.
Q 04The name of the high, wispy cirrus cloud comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Curl or fringe
Cirrus is made of ice crystals and produces halos and sun dogs when sunlight passes through the hexagonal crystals.
Q 05The prefix in 'stratus' clouds means what?
Layer
They form flat, uniform sheets and rarely manage more than drizzle or a little snow.
Q 06Which prefix marks a mid-level cloud, as in altostratus and altocumulus?
Alto-
High-level versions take cirro-, while low clouds have no altitude prefix at all.
Q 07What is the towering thunderstorm cloud with a flat, anvil-shaped top called?
Cumulonimbus
The anvil forms where rising air hits the inversion near the tropopause and spreads out.
Q 08Roughly how high do the tops of typical mature thunderstorm clouds reach?
About 12,000 metres
Unusually tall ones top out around 20,000 metres, and their bases can sink to just 6 metres above the ground.
Q 09By definition, a very low stratus cloud at ground level is called fog when visibility drops below what?
1 kilometre
If visibility stays at 1 km or more, it is called mist instead.
Q 10Which fishing grounds off Newfoundland are often called one of the foggiest places on Earth?
The Grand Banks
The foggiest places tend to lie above cold ocean currents; the least foggy parts of the US are the southwestern deserts.
Q 11Which clouds, forming near the top of the mesosphere at 80-85 km, are Earth's highest?
Noctilucent
That is about ten times the altitude of ordinary high clouds; ice can only form there below about minus 120 °C.
Q 12Night-shining mesospheric clouds were first recorded in 1885, two years after which volcanic eruption?
Krakatoa
Observers studying the eruption's strange sunsets were sure they would have noticed the clouds earlier had they existed.
Q 13Mammatus clouds, the pouches hanging under a storm cloud, take their name from the Latin word for what?
Udder or breast
The lumpy underside forms as cold air sinks in pockets while warm air rises around it.
Q 21Which wave-like, 'underwater'-looking cloud was added to the International Cloud Atlas in 2017?
Asperitas
The same edition formally named roll clouds volutus and hole-punch clouds cavum.
Q 22The Morning Glory, a roll cloud up to 1,000 km long, is regularly seen from Burketown in which country?
Australia
Glider pilots travel to the Gulf of Carpentaria each spring to ride it.
Q 23What is a fallstreak hole, also called a hole-punch cloud?
A gap left when supercooled droplets suddenly freeze
Passing aircraft can trigger the freezing, and the ice falls out as a streak.
Q 14Which smooth, lens-shaped clouds that form downwind of mountains are regularly mistaken for UFOs?
Lenticular
They sit in standing waves on the leeward side of a mountain and stay put even in strong wind.
Q 15'Contrail' is short for what?
Condensation trail
Water vapour in jet exhaust freezes in the cold high air; soot and sulphur particles give the droplets something to condense on.
Q 16Which chemical, discovered as a seeding agent by Bernard Vonnegut in 1946, is most used to make clouds rain?
Silver iodide
Its crystal lattice closely matches ice; the crystallography later surfaced in his brother Kurt's novel Cat's Cradle.
Q 17Which General Electric scientist discovered the principle of cloud seeding in July 1946?
Vincent Schaefer
He was researching aircraft icing with a deep freeze full of test agents; dry ice did the trick.
Q 18Which city seeded clouds before the 2008 Olympic Games to keep the opening ceremony dry?
Beijing
Rockets carrying silver iodide were fired to make clouds rain out before they reached the stadium.
Q 19The Cloud Appreciation Society was founded in 2005 by which British writer?
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
His book The Cloudspotter's Guide became a BBC documentary, Cloudspotting.
Q 20In what year was the International Cloud Atlas first published?
1896
Its colour photographic plates were cutting-edge and expensive; the 2017 edition is online and added 12 new formations.
Q 24Nacreous clouds, named for their mother-of-pearl colours, form in which layer of the atmosphere?
The stratosphere
They appear only in the extreme cold of the polar winter, at 15 to 25 km up.
Q 25The thick clouds of Venus are made mainly of what?
Sulphur dioxide
Jupiter and Saturn, by contrast, have outer decks of ammonia cloud over water clouds below.
Q 26What is the scientific study of clouds called?
Nephology
It is a branch of cloud physics within meteorology; Aristotle covered clouds in his Meteorologica around 340 BC.
Q 27Which 423 BC Aristophanes comedy has Socrates call certain sky-dwellers the only gods?
The Clouds
It was first performed at the City Dionysia in 423 BC.
Q 28Tiny dust, salt or smoke particles on which vapour condenses into cloud droplets are called what?
Condensation nuclei
Without them, air would need far higher supersaturation before droplets could form.
Q 29Clouds form when air is cooled to which temperature?
Its dew point
Adding moisture from a nearby source can also raise the dew point up to the air's temperature.
Q 30Per NASA, what is the net effect of low and mid-level clouds on Earth's temperature?
Cooling
They reflect sunlight, outweighing the warming caused by thin high clouds trapping heat.