#DYK clouds may look like giant balls of soft cotton floating in the sky, but they're not as light as you may think?
In fact, the average cumulus cloud weighs approximately 1.1 million pounds – about as much as 100 elephants!
So what keeps them from falling on our heads
There are two reasons:
A cloud’s weight is distributed among trillions of tiny water droplets spread out over a pretty big space (see just how much below.)
A cloud is less dense than dry air, so it retains buoyancy.
Clouds form when water vapor rises high in the atmosphere and turns into tiny water droplets as it cools off. As these droplets spread out, they scatter sunlight and create the white sheen that we see as a cloud.
On their own, these droplets do not weigh much, but you can calculate their total heft.
Scientists estimate the density of a cumulus cloud is about 0.5 grams per cubic meter. The average cumulus cloud is about a kilometer across and a kilometer high, which amounts to 1 billion cubic meters. If you do the math: 1,000,000,000 x 0.5 = 500,000,000 grams of water droplets in a cloud.
That equals 1.1 million pounds, or about 551 tons.
As long as the air below a cloud is heavier, it will float above. When the water density of a cloud increases and the droplets grow bigger and heavier, the cloud falls – in the form of rain.
Sources: usgs.gov; sciencealert.com; mentalfloss.com
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