Cirrocumulus

Latin Translation 

Cirrus = “a bird’s tuft” 

Cumulus = “heap” or “pile” 

Height  

Between 16,500 to 45,000ft (~ 5000 to 13,700 metres) in mid-latitudes. 

Cirrocumulus clouds, also known as ‘mackerel sky’. Note the narrow margins of sky around the small, fluffy clouds that are otherwise densely packed.

 About 

Cirrocumulus is a high-altitude cloud, part of the high-level cloud family group in the troposphere, and is reasonably rare. It is made up of many regularly spaced small white clouds called cloudlets.  

How do they form? 

When water vapour is lifted to the upper troposphere it cools and largely turns into ice crystals, although sometimes some can remain in a supercooled liquid form. Cirrocumulus clouds are made up of almost exclusively ice crystals. These ice crystals are then moved around vertically by atmospheric turbulence, creating lots of cloudlets with a fluffy cumulus shape.   

How to spot them? 

Looking high into the sky, cirrocumulus clouds have a textured look and are bright white. Some say that they look like the scaly skin on fish, commonly called a mackerel sky.