How can different types of clouds predict the weather?
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Clouds get thicker as more of them begin to pile up. Cirrus Clouds for example often look like waves and from experience alone you can presume that it means rain is about to come. As the rain nears, clouds do get thicker. Though cirrus clouds are often the first sign.
Clouds are a visual marker of how the air is moving, where the air gets cold enough to squeeze out the water it holds at lower elevations & higher temperatures. By knowing what the air is doing, meteorologists & educated laypeople can make a pretty good guess about what weather is likely to happen soon.
Probably the most common to the most people is a thunderstorm. You know when you look west & the horizon is a wall of black? And underneath is almost as dark because of the rain? Usually a mass of colder air is moving in and under a mass of warmer air. The warmer air is rising far & fast, so it cools quickly and dumps lots of moisture. Those are tall, powerful clouds.
When the updrafts are strong, water is carried up where the air temperature is below 32F/0C and it freezes into sleet or hail. The stronger the updraft, the bigger the hail because the wind keeps tumbling the ice pellet through the water/freezing areas until it gets too heavy.
Contrast that to fog. Fog is essentially a very peaceful cloud at ground level, the unmoving air becoming too cold to hold water. The big worries here are visibility for driving/flying, and black ice if the ground is below 32F/0C.
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