Why are clouds gray before they rain?  Water isn't gray.?
448218
Becuase they're sad =]\nHehe. xD
150463
There are a couple of reasons that work together to explain this situation. The first one has to do with how raindrops form. \n\nNow, it may seem silly to make such an obvious statement as, "Rain always falls from clouds." But once it has been said, we can then ask, "What is going on inside those clouds?" And that question leads us to plenty of relevant information! \n\nDo you remember the last time your local weather was described as being "hot and humid"? Do you remember what it FELT like? Do you also remember what the air LOOKED like? The reason I am asking these questions is because it is important to know that ordinary water is commonly found in one of three forms: solid, liquid, or gas. The liquid form is what we call "water", while the solid form we call "ice", and the gas form we call "water vapor". Water vapor is colorless, odorless, and invisible. But you sure can FEEL it on a hot and humid day! \n\nNext, do you remember the last time you encountered some fog? Think about what IT looked like. If you looked real close, you would have seen zillions of tiny tiny droplets of water floating in the air. And, if you remember the last time you saw some steam, you might think that it looked just like fog (except it was hotter). Steam is NOT pure water vapor! \n\nWell, it happens that the description, "zillions of tiny tiny droplets of water floating in the air", applies to every fog, to every mist, to every burst of steam -- and to every cloud in the sky. If you sit back and simply watch the clouds for a while, you will see that some clouds grow, some shrink, and some do nothing but move across the sky. What is happening to the growing or shrinking clouds? When a cloud grows, water vapor in the air gradually "condenses" to form lots more tiny tiny droplets. When a cloud shrinks, many droplets are completely "evaporating" to become invisible water vapor. \n\nAs the winds move air across the sky, carrying clouds along, fragments of wind known as "eddys" can do strange things to the shapes of clouds. A common game is to study a cloud's shape and guess what it looks like. Also, winds from different directions can collide with each other, which often has great effects upon clouds. It depends on how cold or warm the colliding winds are, and how much water each wind carries (only the differences matter, not whether the water is in the form of vapor or tiny drops). \n\nFor rain to happen, the weather conditions inside the clouds, and surrounding them, has to cause the droplets to grow. Some droplets will grow by colliding and combining with each other -- just what you Asked about. Some droplets will grow by acquiring more and more water vapor from the air. Some will do both. But the important thing to remember now is that MOST of the droplets in the clouds grow at the same time! \n\nBUT, the droplets do not all grow at the same rate; some grow faster than others. As soon as ANY get big enough, they start to fall out of the cloud. Water is heavier than air, after all. Depending on the wind conditions, those first raindrops might be blown back up into the cloud, where they can grow some more. Eventually, however, they get too big to stay up in the air, so they fall all the way to the ground. And the slower-growing droplets will fall after them, and the slower-growing-yet droplets will fall after THEM, and so on. This is the essence of the raining process. \n\nAs I said at the start, there are a couple of reasons why the raindrops don't combine to make a single stream. The first reason is simply that raindrops start falling just as soon as they are too heavy to stay in the air. The second reason is that they are all falling together DOWNWARDS, not sideways. If the wind blows them sideways, they all move TOGETHER sideways. That isn't good enough to cause them to meet each other, while falling, so they could combine to form a si
1132230
Standing in any cloud you would get wet. Clouds are made up from condensation from rain water. It is water droplets that make the clouds in the first place.
470783
yes, clouds are just like fog, except they are higher and some contain moisture.  Although you can't walk on clouds, they do hold water that can fall down to earth as water or ice, that has a lot to do with how hard the wind is blowing at the same height as the cloud holding the water.  But aircraft fly though clouds all the time, so you can't walk on it, and trying to grab a cloud with your hand would be like catching smoke.
192084
Well...\n\nThe "sun is out" whenever there is a break in the clouds that can let the sunlight in.  You can still have clouds overhead providing precipitation.\n\nAlso, in rare cases, the clouds can drop precipitation and quickly leave while it is still falling to the earth, even though it is not hitting the ground yet.  Remember that precipitation takes a few minutes to travel from the clouds to the ground.\n\nPEACE IS COMMING SOON!
1071215
The seawater simply reflects the light ..at dawn iit is orangish as the sky is orangish at noon light blue and in the night it is deep blue \nthe reason why the sky turns orange in the morning and evening is explained by raielings law of scattering
115181
Heat from the sun that warms water in the Oceans, rivers,and lakes. The water evaporates goes up inot the clouds, evaporated watre dropplets cling to dust particles in the atmoshpere, These become clouds, and as soon as enough water is clinging to one drop it beginn, rivers to rain, as if the clouds are to heavy to hold anymore. If it is cold then it will snow. This falls to the ground and (if snow melts) runs into the ocean rivers and lakes. REpeat Process with heat from the sun. ^^
50071
The whiteness of clouds is due to the tiny particles of water that make them up refracting the sunlight that enters them to make it appear brighter as it comes out. They are white because all wavelengths are allowed to pass through them; none are absorbed.\n\nThe fluffiness of some clouds is caused by the interactions of winds and pressures that force the water particles into a particular shape.
502136
Actually, it is the rotation of the earth that causes weather and then clouds.\nThe clouds move across the sky as a result of differences in heat between regions. All of the matter around the earth is held to it by gravity. However, clouds "float" in air. So they will move at slightly different speeds. \n\nEver watch when they stir a milkshake? the different colors all swirl similarly.
818482
A cloud is a visible mass of condensed droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology.\n\nOn Earth, the condensing substance is water vapor, which forms small droplets of water or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded with billions of other droplets or crystals, they are visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths: they thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light very efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the cloud, hence the grey or even sometimes dark appearance of the clouds at their base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background, and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may be colored accordingly. In the near-infrared range, however, clouds would appear very dark because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at these wavelengths.\n\nCloud formation and properties\nClouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. This can happen in three ways:\n\n1. The air is cooled below its saturation point. This happens when the air comes in contact with a cold surface or a surface that is cooling by radiation, or the air is cooled by adiabatic expansion (rising). This can happen:\n* along warm and cold fronts (frontal lift)\n* where air flows up the side of a mountain and cools as it rises higher into the atmosphere (orographic lift)\n* by the convection caused by the warming of a surface by insolation (diurnal heating)\n* when warm air blows over a colder surface such as a cool body of water.\n\n2. Clouds can be formed when two air masses below saturation point mix. Examples are breath on a cold day, aircraft contrails and Arctic sea smoke.\n\n3. The air stays the same temperature but absorbs more water vapor into it until it reaches saturation point.\n\nThe water in a typical cloud can have a mass of up to several million tonnes. However, the volume of a cloud is correspondingly high, and the net density of the relatively warm air holding the droplets is low enough that air currents below and within the cloud are capable of keeping it suspended. As well, conditions inside a cloud are not static: water droplets are constantly forming and re-evaporating. A typical cloud droplet has a radius on the order of 1 x 10-5 m and a terminal velocity of about 1-2 cm/s. This gives these droplets plenty of time to re-evaporate as they fall into the warmer air beneath the cloud.\nCumulonimbus cloud\nEnlarge\nCumulonimbus cloud\n\nMost water droplets are formed when water vapor condenses around a condensation nucleus, a tiny particle of smoke, dust, ash, or salt. In supersaturated conditions, water droplets may act as condensation nuclei.\n\nWater droplets large enough to fall to the ground are produced in two ways. The most important means is through the Bergeron Process, theorized by Tor Bergeron, in which supercooled water droplets and ice crystals in a cloud interact to produce the rapid growth of ice crystals; these crystals precipitate from the cloud and melt as they fall. This process typically takes place in clouds with tops cooler than -15°C. The second most important process is the collision and wake capture process, occurring in clouds with warmer tops, in which the collision of rising and falling water droplets produces larger and larger droplets, which are eventually heavy enough to overcome air currents in the cloud and the updraft beneath it and fall as rain. As a droplet falls through the smaller droplets which surround it, it produces a "wake" which draws some of the smaller droplets into collisions, perpetuating the process. This meth
406921
clouds are just condensted water the water would stick to the bag eg.- fill jar with water put top on and wait a while water particas form a "cloud"
278514
The sky is colourless. It is black. Scientifically at least.\n\nThe sun's rays of light reflect off water and those coloured rays are reflected onto the sky. That is why the sky looks blue. \n\nWhen it changes to other colours it depends on how much light the sun gives off and what colour that makes the surface of the water. That is also why, at night, when the sun is gone, the sky is black.
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All clouds are white.  That is, any time you are on the same side of a cloud as the sun, the cloud will look white.\n\nYou think some clouds look gray because you have been looking at them from the ground, and when you look up, the cloud is blocking most of the sunlight that would otherwise be coming through to you.\n\nAs the following site says, "...clouds look gray when they block sunlight. The thicker the cloud, the more light it blocks."
470292
When sun shines on water, it warms it up and since heat is lighter, the water kinda floats up into the air. That's called evaporating. Then when it's high in the sky, many little water droplets come together and from clouds. When there's too many water droplets, the cloud becomes to watery and it rains. Then it starts all over again.
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Plants extract water from all the other admixtures which they do not need. This water is lost to the atmosphere through transpiration which aids in cloud formation and hence rains.
233535
i always thought it was because there was no humidity in the air...probably wrong, anyway. or maybe its because the warm climate doesnt allow the moisture to turn back into water. who knows? prob a weatherman.
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I did a Yahoo Search for:\nflat cloud bottom\nhttp://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv1-&p=flat%20cloud%20bottom\n\nand I found this page which is from a sight call "Ask A Scientist" where they answer this very question:\nhttp://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00041.htm\n\nThe answers aren't great, but it seems to do with level at which water vapor begins to condense into cloud forming water droplets.  It depends on the temperature or air pressure.  The reason the bottoms of some clouds look flat is that these conditions are pretty uniform over a large area.  As you go higher up, temperature and pressure decrease and the transition point is a fairly consistent altitude for that moment in time.\n\nFor more information on clouds and cloud types:\nhttp://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/home.rxml