How Much Does A Cloud Weigh?

MyNameIsFred writes "ABC News is running an article revealing unexpected facts about weather formations. Ever wonder how much a cloud weighs? What about a hurricane? A meteorologist has done some estimates and the results might surprise you..." Reports that include the phrase "more than all the elephants on the planet" are always welcome.

Comments

NEWS ALERT (Summary)

[error502]

Clouds are made of a lot of water. A lot of water is heavy. Clouds are heavy.

In other news, the sky is blue and grass is green.

Re:NEWS ALERT (Summary)

[error502]

*Gasp!* The sky isn't actually blue! My world has been shaken! ...Grass is still green, right? ;-)

Re:NEWS ALERT (Summary)

[Negative Response]

Um, I read the article, and doesn't it say clouds are made of elephants? Millions of them?

Re:NEWS ALERT (Summary)

[glyph42]

Then my shirt is not red, and my pants are not beige, because when I turn off the light, they're all black, right? Or if I shine blue light on them, they look blue! Wait, but that blue light is black if I turn it off, so it cannot be blue! In fact, nothing is any color! There are no colors at all! Revelation! Ack! I can't see!

Re:NEWS ALERT (Summary)

[Idarubicin]

The sky is composed of nitrogen and oxygen in large proportions. Both are transparent materials in gaseous form. They do, however, refract light like a prism.

They do indeed--but that has precious little to do with why the sky is (usually) blue. Refraction occurs when light passes from a medium with one refractive index into another, and bends in so doing. There are lots of websites on the topic. The amount of bending that occurs depends on the material and on the wavelength of the light. Typically, materials have a higher index of refraction for shorter wavelengths--this dependence of refractive index enables prisms to separate light into component colours.

The apparent colour of the sky depends not on refraction (air has an index of 1.003, only a shade more than vacuum's 1.000) so light bends very little passing through the atmosphere. The important effect is Rayleigh scattering. Light with shorter wavelengths is scattered much more strongly--red and yellow light from the sun follows a fairly direct path to the viewer, so the sun appears as a yellow disc. Blue light is scattered repeatedly by the atmosphere, resulting in a diffusely blue sky. Interestingly, if you take a long exposure photograph on a moonlit night, the sky will still show up as blue from scattered moonlight.

Incidentally, I would call the 'sky' blue, even though the gases of the atmosphere are (except around cities) colourless. That's the colour you see when you look up, in the direction of what a layperson would call the sky. Oh, and I am a physicist.

If you look at a blue ball through the edge of a prism and it looks red, is the ball still blue? I think so.

If you look at a 'blue' ball through the edge of a prism, it will look blue or black--if it reflected large amounts of red light, then it wouldn't appear blue without the prism in the first place.

I would call you a pedant, if you were right.

I would still call you a pedant--and a condescending one, at that--even though you're a little iffy on scattering of light. If you would like some further pedantry, I would be pleased to explain why the sky is red at sunset.

I knew it

[Kshu]

I always knew that elephants could fly...

Units Units Units

[NASAKnight]

Doesn't anybody know that elephants are non-standard units? Give me something I can work with here, people. How many library of congresses would it take to equal the weight of a storm cloud?

Stephen

Re:Units Units Units

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideally a measurement like this should be expressed in 'Cats and Dogs' as opposed to elephants. :)

Target Audience?

[i_am_nitrogen]

Who on earth is this written for? It says at the bottom that at least two people contributed to the report. The language is like that of a 4th grader. Is this what all ABC News reports look and/or sound like?

This makes the BBC seem like something written by Stephen Hawking.

An earlier answer

[staplegun]

Cecil Adams answered this a few years back. Sure he uses 747's instead of elephants, but his answer is a bit more detailed.

Elephants Smelephants...

[Ironix]

Yes, and I have a car that weighs over 1 trillion fleas.

Did I mention my laptop that must weigh over 50 field mice...

Re:Math?

[error502]

If that were actually RIAA math, one cloud would weigh about one elephants. You have to take into account how old they are. A really old elephant is equivalent to two middle-aged elephants. You also have to take into account if they know any circus tricks. The elephants that know circus tricks are equivalent to the weight of five regular elephants. Then there are the wild elephants, which are the equivalent of ten elephants that grew up in zoos.

How do you convert that to midgets?

[tjstork]

The real question is how many midgets does an elephant weigh? If have 48 midgets per elephant, and I have 600 elephants per cloud, then....

Elephant Units

[questamor]

Are they Metric or Imperial elephants?

Re:Elephant Units

[Pompatus]

Are they Metric or Imperial elephants?

Definately Imperial elephants. Since we're talking about clouds, they have to be storm trooper elephants.

More accurate methods

[StewedSquirrel]

Perhaps a more accurate method would be to extrapolate from the amount of water actually present in a cloud. A "cloud" isn't some well-defined object containing a set density of water. I'm sure a big puffy white one has a LOT less water than a big mean dark one that is the same size.

Then again, when we're talking about clouds... they're just concentrations of moisture that happen to refract and reflect visible light. The air has moisture everywhere. What exactly is the difference in moisture content between a cloud and a "really wet day" in the jungle?

I've seen it rain with very little cloud cover... So while we're at it, why not just weigh the air?

Or we could get around to other even more pointless activities... ANYTHING to get you on /. :-)

Stewey

Re:I find your sense of superiority pathetic.

[RALE007]

I see no reason why most people should have some natural appreciation of what "550 tons" actually means.

I know how much 550 tons is, that's like

The weight of 9,500 ex girlfriends, or 550 ex girlfriends if you live in Utah.

The amount of shit expelled in the average SCO press release.

The weight of my formerly miniscule equipment after I replied to *every* penis enlarging piece of spam I've ever received.

Since they insist on reporting on the weights of things relative to others, instead of just sticking to a standard unit of measurment, I say the pick more interesting objects than VW Bugs or Elephants. For instance:

For extremely bad news, they could pick something friendly or cute to reference, such as "A comet with the mass of 7 billion cute fuzzy bunny rabbits is on a collision course with the Earth. I for one can't wait for the bunnies to get here!"

For scientific news trying to get your average Joe Blows attention for future (hopeful) government funding; "In other news, a space probe weighing as much as 170 pairs of Pamela Andersons breasts was launched at Mars today. The rocket carrying the probe created a massive 18,000lbs of thrust to get the probe headed on its way. Although there is a slight possibility of damage to the delicate probe, the 18,000 pounds of thrust must be used on the mass of Pamela Andersons tits to enable it to build up enough speed, faster and faster as it goes, to escape the Earths gravity. I'm sure every man involved is very proud at the success and has a special feeling at the moment."

Etc. Lame, but fun, try making your own.

Getting up close and personal with those elephants

[Infensus]

Try skydiving trough a cloud. The do indeed look fluffy and soft from an airplane, but when you fall trough them at 200-280kmh, it feels quite different.. All those small droplets hitting your bare skin feels like hundreds or thousands of small nails, and larger drops can be be painful trough thin clothing as well..
Not to mention hail within clouds. Hail is really, really painful. Skydivers really don't like hail. At all.