Cloud

Cloud

In meteorology, a cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body. These suspended particles are also known as aerosols. Clouds in earth's atmosphere are studied in the cloud physics branch of meteorology. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated; cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. In general, precipitation will fall to the surface; an exception is virga, which evaporates before reaching the surface.

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Famous quotes containing the word cloud:

    Hearing the low sound
    of a cloud scattering rain
    at midnight
    and thinking for an eternity
    on his absent young wife,
    a traveller heaved a sigh
    and with a flood of tears
    howled the whole night long.
    Now, villagers won’t let him stay
    in their place anymore.
    Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)

    A brush had left a crooked stroke
    Of what was either cloud or smoke
    From north to south across the blue;
    A piercing little star was through.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    O months of blossoming, months of transfigurations,
    May without cloud and June stabbed to the heart,
    I shall not ever forget the lilacs or the roses
    Nor those the spring has kept folded away apart.
    Louis Aragon (1897–1982)