As a child, I love to look at clouds especially during the evening and night time because I love the shapes they try to form. From seeing elephants, plane, bear, and so on, clouds form different types of shape, and one this is certain that I am not the first to start looking at clouds. In fact, humans have been looking at clouds since when we first arrived on this planet and basic science tells us that cloud is full of water and from the look of its size, it should weigh more than a Boeing 737 MAX or what do you think? But why have the cloud never fallen from the sky?
We know clouds to be a fluffy pile of water vapor above our head in the sky and while there are different types of clouds from Cirrus, Cirrocumulus, Lenticular, Fog, Nimbostratus, Altocumulus, and others with letters starting with Cs and As, we know they are all one name "cloud". As the sun heats the earth, it causes warm humid air to rise through the lower atmosphere (Troposphere), it tends to cool and some condense into tiny liquid droplets to become a cloud and the vapor rises can determine the type of cloud. Cloud form from human engine jet will give us Cirrus cloud, cloud pushed up a mountain will give Lenticular cloud, and the most common of all cloud is the cumulus which we see every time.
Before weather satellites and forecasting technologies, the cloud was used to forecast when it would rain and when it wouldn't. When clouds were extremely high in the sky, or when there were no cloud in the sky meant that the weather was clear but when clouds were close to the ground or in cases were the cloud were dark, it meant rain was coming. Geographers and Meteorologist still rely on cloud for a lot of information about the weather. Now that we know a little about clouds, how do they stay up there without falling off to the ground seeing that they weight a lot.
So when this cloud go up, they remain up because of condensation where the cloud releases its heat and this allows the cloud to stay above just like a hot air balloon. So just like it is not possible to stay on a hot air balloon but can stay in the carrier so is cloud. We cannot stay on them but an object can stay in them. You remember the fish rain, and other phenomenons, it is because they stay in the cloud.
Lt. Col William Rankin stayed in the cloud accidentally when he was piloting his fighter jet above a cloud (a comulonimbus cloud), the engine caught fire. He used his parachute to escape from the plane above 40,000ft and he landed in a cloud tower of lightning, thunder, rain, and ice, after which he landed 40 minutes later instead of 10 minutes.
You must have heard the word cloud 9 before, well it is as a result of the 1896 edition of the international cloud atlas that place comulonimbus as the world tallest cloud and at number 9. Asides from fishes or tadpoles that they may find their way into the cloud very rarely, scientist have confirmed that living things like airborne bacteria are regular inhabitants of clouds and make up about 20% of cloud condensation nuclei which makes water to condense.
The average lifespan of a cumulus cloud is 10 minutes which means that the cloud would drop its water and water vapor rises again to become a new cloud so we can say that it lives and dies. There is still a lot about clouds that we do not know, and scientist are still trying to understand them.
Reference
https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/clouds/ten-basic-clouds
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1212089110
https://theinternetsaysitstrue.com/2024/03/11/william-rankin-the-man-who-fell-through-a-cloud/
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/49786/how-much-does-cloud-weigh
https://blog.ted.com/8-illuminating-facts-about-clouds/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1212089110
https://theinternetsaysitstrue.com/2024/03/11/william-rankin-the-man-who-fell-through-a-cloud/
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/49786/how-much-does-cloud-weigh
https://blog.ted.com/8-illuminating-facts-about-clouds/
