Clouds weigh more than 100 elephants
Yep, those fluffy things in the sky are secretly giants. How's that for heavy?
Picture a single, fluffy white cloud drifting across a blue summer sky
Approximately how much does an average white cumulus cloud weigh?
- Yep, those fluffy things in the sky are secretly giants. How's that for heavy?
- You don't see this weight fall because the water is spread out over a massive space in the form of microscopic droplets.
- If that same cloud decides to become a storm cloud, like a cumulonimbus, its weight can jump to over 10 billion pounds-the equivalent of 1,000 blue…
That fluffy white cumulus cloud drifting across the sky isn't light at all. It weighs approximately 1.1 million pounds.
This mass comes from trillions of tiny water droplets. Researchers calculate this by measuring the cloud's volume and multiplying it by the density of its water content. For a typical cloud measuring one kilometer in diameter, the math adds up to over 500 tons of water.
You don't see this weight fall because the water is spread out over a massive space in the form of microscopic droplets. These droplets are so small that it takes a million of them to make a single raindrop.
The cloud stays aloft because upward air currents, called updrafts, push the tiny droplets up faster than they can fall. These updrafts work against gravity to keep the million-pound mass suspended in the sky.
If that same cloud decides to become a storm cloud, like a cumulonimbus, its weight can jump to over 10 billion pounds-the equivalent of 1,000 blue whales hanging in the sky.
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