Students can learn how to determine the percentage of cloud cover in the sky, and how to identify distinct cloud formations, such as curling cirrus clouds, flat stratus clouds, or puffy cumulus clouds.

These cloud formations affect our work on the Half Moon in several ways. First, they can serve as an indicator of incoming weather patterns. More seriously, however, overcast skies can make celestial navigation nearly impossible. As it happens, this leg of the voyage coincided with a high pressure system (and resulting heat wave) that produced consistently hazy, mostly clear skies throughout most of the voyage. No one minded when rain storms finally blew through the region on Day Five!