How much does a cloud weigh?
When you're flying in an airplane above a blanket of clouds, the pillars of white and gray look soft, fluffy and lighter than air. But those bouncy-looking clouds are much, much heavier than they appear.
Clouds are composed mainly of air and millions of tiny water droplets, which form when water condenses around a "seed" particle. Seed particles can be anything from nitric acid to vapours released by trees.
In measuring the weight of the water in an average cumulus cloud, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado measured a cloud's shadow, estimated its height, bearing in mind that cumulus clouds are frequently as tall as they are wide and estimated the average density of water droplets at about 0.5 gram per cubic meter and arrived at the sum of around 500 tons - the equivalent of about 100 elephants.
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