How can clouds hold water?

Question

I mean, its all just mist, when you get high enough. How can it hold anything?

This question has always fasinated me! ^^

Answer 1

The above 2 answers are correct, but I would also add that some clouds are composed of minute ice crystals that are so small they float.

Answer 2

they're all correct.

But to put it in a perspective that you will have personal experience with. If you've ever been in the fog- you've been in a cloud. Just a cloud that's at ground level. You can see, feel and touch the tiny little water droplets hanging in the air.

You might also wonder why clouds stay up in the sky. There are quite a few reasons- but here are a couple. Moist air is actually lighter than dry air... so it floats.
Also, when air vaporizes (the opposite of evaporates) it releases heat... just the opposite of when water evaporates it feels cool. This latent heat of vaporization causes the cloud to get warmer than the air around it and hot air rises.

Answer 3

Heres a thing you should know because clouds don't hold water. They are the water.it's acually just alot of evaporated water that came off the earth and now has bunched up together . And the reason it rains wouldn't be the fact that it can't fit any more water in it but its just gotten so heavy it turns most of it self into water because it's so much water it forms millions droplets or so. And you said a clouds just mist and the truth is mist is water.Bye.

Answer 4

A cloud does not "hold" water... it *is" water, in the form of very fine droplets held aloft by air currents. When the droplets grow large enough to fall, that's rain. But the cloud is also continuously fed by evaporation: water vapor rises from the ground and ocean, then condenses into tiny droplets at the altitude where the pressure and temperature allow this.

Answer 5

They actually don't hold water, because they are water, just a very vaporized form of it. When it comes down to earth, the small droplets join together to make larger droplets like we know when they reach the ground. At least that's my perception of it...