1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

temperatures of high altitudes transform
its .water vapor into billions of tiny water
Qroplets. A cloud is formed that grows with
great rapidity. A current of air rushes up
into the newly formed thundercloud at a
speed of about sixty miles per hour. This
air turbulence is characteristic of a thun.
dercloud. Because of such air action you
may, at times, feel a strong breeze before
the storm starts. Here in Morocco, as in
many other countries, a breeze in the wintertime
often indicates that rain is coming,
and soon. Sometimes the current of air
flowing into the thundercloud is sufficiently
strong to counteract the wind that is push.
ing the clouds. This results in a calm before
the storm.
A well-developed thundercloud can push
its massive head as high as 39,000 to 49,-
000 feet. In such clouds almost all kinds
of weather are manifested-rain, snow,
hail, wind and lightning. As the storm begins,
lightning flashes across the sky, fol·
lowed by a clap of thunder. The clouds
iight up intermittently like an old, defective
neon sign, and then comes the rain.
What a downpour that can be! It, can
drench an area of a few miles with 100,000
tons of water in a matter of minutes.
It was during the years 1946 and 1947
that scientists showed that the thunder·
, cloud is mort:,'than just a mass of water
droplets. Instead, it 'has a complex structure.
Its interior might be compared to an
immense honeycomb, for it is made up of
many cells or .. units that are separated from
one another by walls of comparatively
calm cloud. A large thundercloud may
spread out over a distance of 250 miles,
but within are these many cells that may
be only three miles wide. Actually, each of
the cells makes its own storm, and each
produces its own lightning, thunder and
rain. Many of them may be raining at the
same time. Some may be just beginning,
while others are in the middle of their
NOV/fJMBER se, 1964
rain cycle, and still others are tlnishing the
cycle.
The last stage of a thunderstorm is
marked by a gentle drizzle that lets you
know that the rain is about over. At this
point the thundercloud develops its familiar
anvil-shaped top. With this understand.
ing of how a thundercloud is constructed,
a person should feel free of any superstitious
fear of It. A thundercloud is not an
evil spirit or a god. Instead, it is a very
natural thing that automatically' takes
place in the atmosphere when conditions
are right.
Droplet8 of Water
Clouds are great collections of water
droplets. Since water is much denser than
air, you may wonder how great cloud for·
mations that weigh hundreds of thousands
of tons because of the water in them can
float on the air. It would seem that the
water droplets that form the clouds would
fall, and so they do, but because of their
small size and the air resistance they encounter,
they fall very slowly. Very little
progress is made by them as they fall because
of upward movements of air that
push them up. When enough of them finally
get together to form a large raindrop
there is sufficient weight to overcome this
upward action of air currents.
What actually causes rain is still one
of the most perplexing problems that confront
the scientists who study clouds. It is
not easy to explain how perhaps a hundred
million droplets of water come together
in a cloud to form a raindrop. Nei·
ther is it clear why these droplets that
form clouds do not form raindrops in all
clouds.
One of the theories that attempts to explain
the formation of raindrops claims
that many clouds fly high in the atmosphere,
with the result that their tops have
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