I was thinking that there should be a Cloud Identification Station. I have no idea how it would be possible for the station to tell what type of clouds are in the sky/elevation of clouds, but it would definately been an interesting and cool station.
I’m almost 100% sure that there is no such thing as of now, because someone on these forums would have most likely mentioned it.
If anyone has any ideas about this, maybe we could email a company that sells weather stations about the idea.
Thanks for all of the help and ideas!
Isn’t that what webcams are for?? #-o
Or some form of doppler radar :-k
There are systems available to estimate cloud height…I’m not sure you want to know how much they cost though.
Cloud type is likely to be tricky. You could do image processing on a webcam image, but I suspect it would take a lot of work and I doubt if you could build it into a weather station costing a few hundred dollars!
I was thinking of the old fashioned way of using the webcam image to determine the cloud type…just look at the image #-o
I doubt most visitors to a website would know the different cloud types by name…but show them a picture…
You could always put a voting mechanism on your site…
Picture 1 - Current webcam picture
Picture 2 to N - Pictures of various cloud types
Vote - What kind of cloud can you see in the webcam picture (store result of votes in database and do some statistical analysis on the votes to work out which is the most likely answer) 
That’s actually not a bad idea…
Too bad I don’t have a webcam or a webpage
How about a graphic which describes the various cloud types for people? Say… hum… 120 x 120 or something?
Oh, Kevin…
I’m terrible cloud type spotting! I’ve seen plenty of pictures trying to show what the various cloud types look like, but clouds are often fluffly and indistinct so they never look quite like the pictures that makes it difficult for my scientific type brain to work out what type I’m looking at. I must have another attempt at my recognition skills sometime.
If you have the money you could purchase a laser ceilometer for cloud coverage and height…those are big bucks though and you’d need to purchase through someone like Vaisala.
Yankee Environmental Systems has developed a “Total Sky Imager” which would probably give you the data you want.
http://www.yesinc.com/products/cloud.html
Again, you’re probably talking big $$$, but I have never contacted them for a quote.
dendrite, I would love to purchase one of those Total Sky Imagers, but they are WAY out of my range as far as price goes. I didn’t ask for a quote, but I’m sure they cost several times what I could spend on one :lol:.
If anyone else finds any other “cloud identification systems” that are in the affordable range, please speak out and share some information with me.
Thanks for all of the continued help.