How to Use cirrus in a Sentence

cirrus

noun
Definition of cirrusnext
  • There were just a few wispy cirrus clouds in the bright blue sky, but that was enough to spark a fire rainbow.
    — Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 11 June 2018
  • First, physicists came to grips with high clouds—the icy, wispy ones like cirrus clouds that are miles high.
    — Natalie Wolchover, WIRED, 3 Mar. 2019
  • Tom looks at 10 pages of class notes on cumulus, stratus, and cirrus clouds and starts to panic.
    — Brian Platzer, The Atlantic, 23 Mar. 2021
  • Crown Lands singer/drummer Cody Bowles commands cirrus-scaling pipes and hot beats.
    — Matt Wake | Mwake@al.com, al, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Meyers’s lines grew icy and severe, distant and distinct, a contrail mingling with the cirrus clouds.
    — Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Thin cirrus clouds will then begin to approach the coast right around sunset as temperatures quickly fall back to the 50s.
    — Gerry Díaz, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 Nov. 2022
  • When the cirrus clouds are lit with color, they can be mistaken for iridescence, according to the NWS.
    — Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 12 Aug. 2022
  • One telltale clue, per Tech Times: The scientists found that the flashes seemed to occur around high-floating cirrus clouds, and those clouds are made up of ice crystals.
    — John Johnson, Fox News, 17 May 2017
  • For example, thin, wispy cirrus clouds, the most common type of high cloud, are difficult to spot against a background of snow, according to NASA.
    — Alessandra Potenza, The Verge, 16 Mar. 2018
  • Clouds come in all shapes and sizes: wispy, high cirrus, puffy cumulus, the low, gray stratocumulus layers that blanket gloomy days.
    — Kate Marvel, Scientific American, 8 Dec. 2017
  • Fall streaks happen when the heavier ice crystals in cirrus clouds fall into and evaporate into the drier air below the cloud.
    — oregonlive, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Strong jet stream winds captured some of the system’s upper-level cirrus, or wispy ice clouds at high altitudes, and carried them east across the Blue Ridge and towards the Mid-Atlantic.
    — Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2021
  • Some of the cirrus clouds on the southeast horizon are the outer cloud bands from Dorian, according to the National Weather Service.
    — Sarah Brookbank, Cincinnati.com, 5 Sep. 2019
  • Nearly horizontal ice particles in cirrus clouds that are 3- to 5-miles high up in the atmosphere.
    — Richard Tribou, OrlandoSentinel.com, 17 May 2017
  • The alto cirrus indicate a change in weather, the mare’s tail mean high-altitude winds, the cumulus means building moisture.
    — Tom Stienstra, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 May 2018
  • In fact, the warming effect from cirrus contrails is actually greater than that of the CO2 from burning aviation fuel.
    — David Hambling, Popular Mechanics, 15 Nov. 2022
  • Harps, flutes and vibraphones formed dissociating patterns like cirrus clouds atop the thick colors of an organ.
    — Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2021
  • Dense forest had suddenly given way to a lake flanked by mountains — a Chia pet landscape of undulating greenery beneath a vivid blue sky streaked with cirrus clouds.
    — Jada Yuan, New York Times, 8 May 2018
  • The three main types are cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus.
    — Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY, 17 July 2022
  • While some contrails fade out quickly, others spread out to form high-altitude cirrus clouds, which have a significant warming effect.
    — David Hambling, Popular Mechanics, 15 Nov. 2022
  • Since the sun is low to the horizon, those alternating shadows and strips of light were projected onto the underside of the thinner, more diaphanous cirrus clouds, which acted like a canvas for the delicate pastel hues.
    — Washington Post, 5 Oct. 2021
  • These are clearly very high-altitude cirrus, or ice clouds, definitely not liquid.
    — Washington Post, 16 July 2021
  • But detailed observers will notice some cirrus on the southeast horizon and -- believe it or not -- this is actually the outer cloud bands of Hurricane Dorian.
    — Sarah Brookbank, Cincinnati.com, 5 Sep. 2019
  • Another idea requires thinning cirrus clouds so heat could more easily escape Earth’s surface.
    — Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 9 Nov. 2022
  • In addition to educational aims, OreSat will map high altitude cirrus clouds in an effort to better understand their role in climate change, and also test a Wi-Fi signal from space.
    — Samantha Swindler, OregonLive.com, 10 Jan. 2018
  • Unfortunately, Rowan-Robinson admitted in a recent research paper that the observations are not high quality and that the region of sky they were captured in is made of filaments of gas known as cirrus.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 16 Nov. 2021
  • Strips of high-altitude cirrus clouds, indicated that Josephine had developed some healthy upper-level outflow.
    — Matthew Cappucci, BostonGlobe.com, 13 Aug. 2020
  • At those frigid heights, some of the particles become nuclei around which condensation gathers and then quickly freezes, helping to produce puffy contrails that either vanish or persist as wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds.
    — Wired, 28 July 2022
  • The wind-shear phenomenon can occur in wispy cirrus clouds or even clear air near thunderstorms, as differences in temperature and pressure create powerful currents of fast-moving air.
    — Audrey McAvoy, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Dec. 2022
  • Clouds are classified into 10 basic genera—such as cirrus and cumulonimubus—which describe their overall character, reports Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 24 Mar. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cirrus.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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