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THE TEN CLOUD GENERA

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THE TEN CLOUD GENERA

three levels of the troposphere to one scale, and the ten genera that live in them

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Standard$1.50

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
science · reference · comparison · everyone · classroom

Height in kilometres on the left; each band is a level of the troposphere in its own latitude belt, all three belts to one scale. Below, the ten genera: abbreviation, Latin name, level, appearance and roots.

TEN NAMES OUT OF FIVE LATIN WORDS

All ten names are built from five words: cirrus — a lock of hair; cumulus — a heap; stratus — spread out; nimbus — a rainy cloud; altum — height. There is nothing else in the system: every genus is one of these words, or two of them joined.

The first word tells you how high. Everything beginning with cirro- sits in the high level, everything beginning with alto- in the middle — five of the ten genera named by their height alone.

And nimbus and altum never stand on their own: there is no cloud simply called Nimbus, though Cirrus, Stratus and Cumulus each stand alone in the list.

On the sheet

  • Height in kilometres on the left; each band is a level of the troposphere in its own latitude belt, all three belts to one scale. Below, the ten genera: abbreviation, Latin name, level, appearance and roots.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 8 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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