Clouds are always rendered on top. If you disable clouds, you can still see a "snapshot" of the last clouds rendered on top of your view.
Environment
Vanilla MC, no mods, or shaders
Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS
openjdk version "1.8.0_252"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_252-8u252-b09-1ubuntu1-b09)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.252-b09, mixed mode)
AMD RYZEN 1700
AMD RADEON RX 580
Duplicate of MC-186064