what are clouds made out of?

Answer 1

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. (Clouds can also occur as masses of material in interstellar space, where they are called interstellar clouds and nebulae.) The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology.

On Earth the condensing substance is typically water vapor, which forms small droplets or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become 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 efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the cloud, hence the gray 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, clouds would appear darker because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.

Answer 2

Clouds are made of small droplets of water or bits of ice that are spread out from each other. Rain falls when the drops get too big and heavy to stay in the cloud.

There are three main kinds of clouds:
Cirrus - meaning curl - clouds are very high, wispy clouds made of ice.
Cumulus - meaning heap - clouds are the large clouds that sometimes look like huge puffs of cotton.
Stratus - meaning stretched out - clouds are made up of low layers of clouds that usually cover the whole sky and blot out the sun.

Answer 3

According to this website (below), clouds are made of small droplets of water or bits of ice that are spread out from each other. Rain falls when the drops get too big and heavy to stay in the cloud.

Answer 4

A cloud is made of condensed water droplets.

Answer 5

Clouds contain tiny water droplets which were formed by the condensation of water vapour on dust particles,tiny particles of salt and droplets of sulphuric acid which are called condensation nuclei.

Answer 6

Water Molecules , not sure of the question . Could write about evaporation and all that but basic comes back to water molecules.

Answer 7

water vapour which is the gaseous state of water. water evaporates and forms small water droplets which combine to form clouds.

Answer 8

Billions & billions of tiny water droplets. Like mist.

Answer 9

Clouds are made out of dirty or ice crystals and water.

Water vapor rises from the earth and exists in the atmosphere, when it hits a bit of dust the vapor clumps together and forms a cloud. When there is a lot of dust then there are a lot of clouds and the altitude of the cloud matters as well; you don’t get rain from high flying cirrus clouds, but you get dangerous storms from cumulus clouds.

According to the History Channel Show Fearless Planet (Dec 10,2007) the trademark red clouds of Miami are created around dust grains from the Sahara Desert and of course smoke clouds are formed around carbon soot.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clouds
“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.

On Earth the condensing substance is typically water vapor, which forms small droplets or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become 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 efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the cloud, hence the gray 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, clouds would appear darker because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.

The color of a cloud tells much about what is going on inside the cloud. Clouds form when relatively warm air containing water vapor is lighter than its surrounding air and this causes it to rise. As it rises it cools and the vapor condenses out of the air as micro-droplets. These tiny particles of water are relatively densely packed and sunlight cannot penetrate far into the cloud before it is reflected out, giving a cloud its characteristic white color. As a cloud matures, the droplets may combine to produce larger droplets, which may combine to form droplets large enough to fall as rain. In this process of accumulation, the space between droplets becomes larger and larger, permitting light to penetrate much farther into the cloud. If the cloud is sufficiently large and the droplets within are spaced far enough apart, it may be that a percentage of the light which enters the cloud is not reflected back out before it is absorbed (Think of how much farther one can see in a heavy rain as opposed to how far one can see in a heavy fog). This process of reflection/absorption is what leads to the range of cloud color from white through grey through black. For the same reason, the undersides of large clouds and heavy overcasts appear various degrees of grey; little light is being reflected or transmitted back to the observer.
Other colours occur naturally in clouds. Bluish-grey is the result of light scattering within the cloud. In the visible spectrum, blue and green are at the short end of light's visible wavelengths, while red and yellow are at the long end. The short rays are more easily scattered by water droplets, and the long rays are more likely to be absorbed. The bluish color is evidence that such scattering is being produced by rain-sized droplets in the cloud.

A greenish tinge to a cloud is produced when sunlight is scattered by ice. A cumulonimbus cloud which shows green is a pretty sure sign of imminent heavy rain, hail, strong winds and possible tornadoes.

Yellowish clouds are rare but may occur in the late spring through early fall months during forest fire season. The yellow color is due to the presence of smoke.

Red, orange and pink clouds occur almost entirely at sunrise/sunset and are the result of the scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere. The clouds are not that color; they are reflecting the long (and unscattered) rays of sunlight which are predominant at those hours. The effect is much the same as if one were to shine a red spotlight on a white sheet. In combination with large, mature thunderheads this can produce blood-red clouds. The evening before the Edmonton, Alberta tornado in 1987, Edmontonians observed such clouds — deep black on their dark side and intense red on their sunward side. In this case the adage "red sky at night, sailor's delight" was wrong.”

Answer 10

water