Re. recognising clouds - the way I learnt to do this was by practicing it in real life. Every morning, I'd look up at the sky and try to figure out what type of clouds I could see. Then I'd go one stage further, and come up with my own short-range forecast.
When I got to work, I'd look at the weather forecast on the met office website, and see how well it matched my own. Cloud types can be found on MetForm 215.
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