LeMone does this by watching her odometer as she drives under a cloud. By measuring a cloud’s shadow when the sun is directly above it, you can get an idea of its width. The density will be greater for different types of clouds. Scientists have measured the water density of a typical cumulus cloud (the white, fluffy ones you see on a nice day) as 1/2 gram per cubic meter-about a small marble’s worth of water in a space you and a friend could comfortably sit in. Today, she shares her cloud-weighing technique with us.įirst, figure out how dense the cloud is. Now all grown up, LeMone is a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and she’s figured out an answer. When Peggy LeMone was in junior high, a friend’s dad pondered that same question, and she kept it in the back of her mind for years. Reader Jane wrote in to note that clouds look so nice and fluffy and lighter-than-air, so they certainly can’t weigh much.
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