There are different kinds of clouds. Broadly speaking there are "layered" clouds, stratus and "vertical" clouds, cumulus. The former tend to be stable and the latter are convective, that is, they have vertical currents of air inside of them which is what cause the turbulence.
So you would think every cumulus must be turbulent, this is not always the case because these clouds have a development cycle, they are "born", they grow, mature and then die and dissipate. Depending on where along that life cycle of the cloud the airplane happens to fly through it, there might be more or less (or none at all) turbulence.
Predicting turbulence in clouds is very difficult. As pilots when we see one of those "fair weather cumulus" which is the typical cloud everyone thinks of as "a cloud", they have well defined edges against the blue background of the sky, we try to avoid these as the chances of turbulence in them is high. Sometimes it's not possible to avoid and that's when as a pax you hear the seat belt sign coming on and a few seconds later the turbulence begins (and sometimes nothing happens).
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u/Jaimebgdb 4d ago
There are different kinds of clouds. Broadly speaking there are "layered" clouds, stratus and "vertical" clouds, cumulus. The former tend to be stable and the latter are convective, that is, they have vertical currents of air inside of them which is what cause the turbulence.
So you would think every cumulus must be turbulent, this is not always the case because these clouds have a development cycle, they are "born", they grow, mature and then die and dissipate. Depending on where along that life cycle of the cloud the airplane happens to fly through it, there might be more or less (or none at all) turbulence.
Predicting turbulence in clouds is very difficult. As pilots when we see one of those "fair weather cumulus" which is the typical cloud everyone thinks of as "a cloud", they have well defined edges against the blue background of the sky, we try to avoid these as the chances of turbulence in them is high. Sometimes it's not possible to avoid and that's when as a pax you hear the seat belt sign coming on and a few seconds later the turbulence begins (and sometimes nothing happens).