Completely off-topic help needed :)

wrote:
One of my 8 year old son's class assignment questions reads, "How can
you look at the clouds and know if it is about to snow?". Never having
seen snow, I hadn't the foggiest idea. Asked a few friends and none
knows either! A quick search on the internet but came up blank,
probably because I haven't given the keywords that might elicit the
correct answer. Wonder who here (Dubai, UAE) came up with such an
irrelevant question!

Any Canadians here who can help? Or anyone near Chicago (snows there,
right?)?

Thanks much in advance and apologies to the rest,

Ramapriya


If the clouds look darker in color, then precipitation is more likely.
If the surface temperature is below zero, then it is likely to turn to
snow. But there is not a whole lot more you can conclude.

Note that these are all probabilities with lots of exceptions. Dark
clouds don't always mean precipitation, you can get virga
(precipitation that do not reach the ground), and you can get rain when
the surface temperature is below zero (freezing rain), and you can get
snow when the surface temp is above freezing (sleet).

Having lived in Canada and the U.S. midwest, I have seen plenty of
snow, sleet, freezing rain and everything in between.