
31/07/2025
Calculation
🌡️ Temperature, Dew Point & Clouds — What’s the Connection? ☁️✈️
Ever wonder how clouds form and what temperature and dew point have to do with it? Let’s break it down ⬇️
💧 The dew point is the temperature where air becomes fully saturated, and water v***r condenses into dew, fog, frost, rain, snow, or—you guessed it—clouds!
When warm, moist, and unstable air rises, it cools at about 5.4°F per 1,000 feet. Meanwhile, the dew point drops at around 1°F per 1,000 feet. So the temperature and dew point converge at 4.4°F per 1,000 feet of altitude.
📏 That means you can estimate cloud base height using this simple formula:
👉 (Temp - Dew Point) ÷ 4.4 × 1,000 = Cloud Base in feet AGL
Example:
🌡️ Temp: 82°F
💧 Dew Point: 38°F
Spread: 44°F
🔽 44 ÷ 4.4 = 10 × 1,000 = 10,000 feet AGL
That’s where you can expect clouds to start forming!