Bizarre Facts

When we look up at the sky, clouds appear to be the very definition of weightlessness—fluffy, ethereal tufts of cotton floating effortlessly in the blue. But this visual lightness is a deception. A standard **cumulus cloud** (the classic white, puffy kind you draw in kindergarten) is actually a floating ocean. Meteorologists estimate that a typical cumulus cloud has a volume of about one cubic kilometer and a density of roughly 0.5 grams of water per cubic meter.

When you do the math, that single, innocent-looking cloud contains about 500,000 kilograms of water droplets. That is **1.1 million pounds**—roughly the weight of 100 elephants or a fully loaded Boeing 747. It is a staggering amount of mass to be hovering over your head. If all that water were to fall at once, it would be a catastrophe, but fortunately, it stays aloft due to physics.

The reason this massive weight doesn't come crashing down is that it is spread out over such a colossal volume. The individual water droplets are so tiny that they are less dense than the dry air surrounding them, allowing them to ride on rising thermal air currents. It’s a delicate balancing act where millions of pounds of water are held up by nothing more than warm air and surface area.