Clouds

📖 In short

Clouds are masses of tiny water droplets or little ice crystals floating in the air. We see them white and fluffy on a fine day, dark grey before rain, or colored red and orange at sunset.

🤩 Did you know?

Droplets in clouds can stay liquid down to 40 degrees below zero.
A small cumulus cloud can hold water as heavy as several elephants.
Fog is a cloud that touches the ground.
Clouds move with the wind, sometimes very fast.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 How do clouds form?

Water evaporates from seas and rivers and rises with warm air. Up high it cools, and the vapor turns into tiny droplets that gather around specks of dust, forming a cloud.

🔍 Shapes and names

Cumulus clouds are fluffy like cotton, stratus clouds are flat and grey and cover the sky, and cirrus clouds are thin and high like feathers. Cumulonimbus clouds are huge and bring thunder and lightning.

💡 From cloud to rain

In a cloud, droplets bump together and join, growing bigger and heavier, and when the air can't hold them up they fall as rain. If it's very cold, they fall as snow or hail.