Ask anything under the sun!

Why does it rain?

Okay, imagine you're boiling a pot of water for your favorite mac 'n' cheese. As the water gets warm, it starts to turn into steam, right? That's just like how the sun heats up water from rivers, lakes and oceans and turns it into vapor in the air. This process is called evaporation. Now, picture that steam rising from your pot and hitting a cold lid - it turns back into tiny droplets of water, doesn't it? That's exactly what happens in the sky! The vapor rises up into the air where it's cooler and transforms back into tiny droplets of water or ice crystals that stick together to form clouds. This process is called condensation.

Now think about when you're building a tower with your building blocks. You can only stack so many blocks before they tumble down, right? The same thing happens with those water droplets or ice crystals in the clouds. When there are too many of them, they become too heavy to stay up in the sky. So, they fall down as rain or if it's really cold, as snow! This is called precipitation.

So next time when you're playing in the rain or making a snowman remember - it's all just a big cycle of water heating up and cooling down! Just like making mac 'n' cheese but way up high in the sky!