 Both clouds and snow cover have a high albedo, which can appear in similar shades of white on visible satellite imagery, so let's go over some ways to distinguish between the two. For starters, regions of snow cover often reveal details of the local terrain, which appear somewhat darker. On this visible satellite image, we can see this swath of white shading, from Ohio through Northern Pennsylvania and into New York and New England, to the north of this line. But the fact that we can pick out some surface features indicates that this is snow cover, not cloud cover. We can see the unfrozen finger lakes in New York, which had a much lower albedo since the snow did not accumulate on the water. Lakes Erie and Ontario were largely unfrozen too, and that gives a nice contrast between the low albedo of the water, which appears dark, next to the higher albedo of the snow cover on the ground, which appears brighter. We can also pick out heavily forested regions, because deciduous and coniferous forests also appear dark on visible imagery. Regions with dense forests mask the high albedo of the underlying snowpack, because trees often lose the snow that accumulates on their limbs fairly quickly. So the satellite sees the canopy of trees instead of the snowpack on the ground. The heavily forested Adirondack Mountains in New York really stick out, as do some forested areas in Northern Pennsylvania. Further to the west into northeastern Ohio, the more agricultural landscape appears brighter because there are fewer trees, and the satellite sees the high albedo snowpack better. Of course, if you have a loop of visible satellite images, distinguishing snow cover from clouds is even easier, because snow cover doesn't move, but clouds do. If we look at this loop, which spans from about 14Z to 1630Z, you can see clouds streaming over Ohio and Michigan into western Pennsylvania and New York. The leading edge of this cloud cover looks pretty wispy and not very bright, and we can still make out some of the snow cover beneath it, suggesting that these are thin cirrus clouds. If you look closely, you can even see some linear features within the cirrus, indicative of airplane contrails. The clouds entering the left side at the end of the loop into northwest Ohio appear brighter and have a higher albedo, indicating that they are thicker than the cirrus streaming ahead of them. Visible satellite imagery is a great tool for discerning cloud thickness, and identifying areas of snow cover when clouds aren't too prevalent. I hope this video helps you with your interpretations of visible satellite imagery.