These summertime clouds did not yield rain all summer on the Gulf Coast.  You can see a hint of the stratospheric thin clouds above, which gave us quite an overcast seeming summer, with no rain.

 Here you see a similar pattern from a higher altitude, where we are flying above the puffy clouds, but below what I assume are stratospheric clouds.

A commercial pilot told me that they “fly above the weather”.  This would be the case because commercial flights usually fly at the lower edge of the stratosphere, which in the temperate region, is about 6.2 to 8.1 miles in altitude ( 32,700  to 42,800 feet).  An average commercial flight cruising altitude is around 35,000 feet.