Ask what a cloud means and you get two answers: one from the weather forecaster, one from the fortune-teller. They are worth keeping apart. The first is about air, water and temperature. The second is about you, and it is a game of imagination. Both start from the same habit of looking up and noticing.
The names we use come from the English chemist Luke Howard, who in 1802 borrowed Latin words to sort the sky. Cirrus means a curl of hair: thin, high, wispy streaks of ice. Cumulus means a heap: the puffy, cauliflower clouds of a fine afternoon. Stratus means a layer: a flat grey blanket. Nimbus means rain. Real skies mix them, which is why the longer names, like cumulonimbus, exist.
Weather lore has opinions about each. Cirrus is often the first sign that the weather is about to change, which is the idea behind sayings like "mackerel sky and mares' tails make tall ships carry low sails". Towering cumulus can build into showers or storms. Low stratus tends to mean a dull, damp, even day. These are rules of thumb, not guarantees, and a forecast will always beat a proverb.
A cloud reader borrows the mood rather than the forecast. Wispy cirrus can suggest something just out of reach, or a change on its way. Heaped cumulus can read as energy, growth, a crowd of plans. A grey stratus sky can read as a pause, a time to stay in and think. None of this is true in the way a barometer is true. It is a prompt, and the useful part is what you notice in yourself while you look.
So the honest answer is that different clouds mean different weather, and different things to different people. Photograph the sky you have today and the reading will start from what is really there: its shapes, its light and its mood. Nephomancy is for entertainment and reflection, not for predicting the weather or your life.
