Clouds form through evaporation and condensation. Water in lakes, rivers, oceans or puddles evaporates into a gas as the sun heats it up. This gas is called water vapour. You can evaporate water yourself by boiling it – watch it disappear as vapor.
As the water vapour rises into the atmosphere it begins to cool. Water vapor, which is invisible, naturally rises up from the Earth’s surface into the atmosphere as warm bubbles, like the bubbles you’d see rising in a lava lamp. The higher it goes from the ground the colder the vapour gets, until it’s cool enough that it becomes tiny water droplets once again.
Clouds are made of millions of these tiny liquid water droplets. The droplets scatter the colors of the sunlight equally, which makes clouds appear white. Even though they can look like cushy puffballs, a cloud can’t support your weight or hold anything up but itself.
The process of evaporation and condensation in the atmosphere is similar to what happens in your bathroom when you take a hot shower: Warm water evaporates and then condenses back into water on the cold mirror.
Water vapor does not condense spontaneously. It needs tiny particles or a surface like your bathroom mirror on which to form a drop. These tiny dust particles that have been lifted by the wind and are floating around in the atmosphere. As the water droplets form they cling to specks of dust, or ice, or salt in the atmosphere. They also cling to each other, which is what makes them more visible. If you think about it, it can be really hard to see a single grain of salt but lots of salt in a pile is easy to spot. It’s the same with water droplets.
Although we can see clouds, if you were to try to touch one your hand would go straight through it. This is because the water droplets are very very small, like the water in steam. Although we can’t really touch clouds you could walk through one. In fact that’s what fog is: a cloud that’s formed close to the ground instead of high in the sky. We can’t touch fog but we can move through it. Although it’s fun to imagine sitting on a cloud, the truth is that you would fall right through it.
Clouds have different shapes depending on how high in the atmosphere they are when they form. Some look like wisps of smoke and some look like fluffy cotton wool, while others look more like a combination of the two.
As cloud droplets rise in the atmosphere, the air temperature decreases. The tiny cloud droplets start to freeze when the temperature drops below below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). It’s the exact same process as making ice cubes in a freezer.
The frozen droplets are now ice crystals. They continue to grow in size as water vapor turns into ice and sticks onto them. Scientists call this process of a gas turning into a solid “deposition.” It creates the beautiful branched ice crystals that you find in snowstorms.
Steady updrafts of air keep these very light water droplets or ice crystals floating in the cloud. Sometimes the water droplets in clouds join together until they make larger droplets, which then fall to the ground as rain.
Larger droplets collect smaller droplets on their way to the ground as raindrops. Snow grows in a similar way, with the crystals sticking to each other. Their little arms can interlock to form a bigger snowflake. When water droplets merge with ice crystals, that makes hail.
Rain droplets grow on their way down to the ground, eventually becoming unstable and breaking up. Clouds can hold a lot of water droplets; some are so large that they contain millions of tons of water!
If you havee ever been outside on a foggy day, you haveve essentially been inside a cloud, just one very close to the ground instead of high in the sky. You may feel a bit of the moisture if you wave your hands around in it and it is dense enough. Fog and clouds are both made of tiny water droplets like the ones you can sometimes see or feel in a hot, steamy shower.
FAQ:
What are clouds made out of?
A cloud is made of water drops or ice crystals floating in the sky. There are many kinds of clouds. Clouds are an important part of Earth's weather.
Can you touch a cloud?
Although we can't really touch clouds you could go through one.
What do you call fluffy clouds?
Cumulus clouds look like fluffy, white cotton balls in the sky. They are beautiful in sunsets, and their varying sizes and shapes can make them fun to observe! Stratus cloud often look like thin, white sheets covering the whole sky.
How do clouds get water?
Clouds form through evaporation and condensation. Water in lakes, rivers, oceans or puddles evaporates into a gas as the sun heats it up. This gas is called water vapour.
This invisible vapor rises into the atmosphere, where the air is colder, and condenses into clouds. Air currents move these clouds all around the earth.
What causes white fluffy clouds?
In a cloud sunlight is scattered equally, meaning that the sunlight continues to remain white and gives clouds their distinctive white appearance.
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