Where did the cloud suddenly go?
Today, Mika and I went for a walk with my parents. The sky was blue, and there were a few white clouds. I love it when they have different shapes. Sometimes they look like animals or like a big iceberg. One cloud even looked a bit like Mika!
During a break at a playground, Mika and I forgot about the clouds for a while because we were so busy climbing and sliding. But when we continued on our way and looked up at the sky again, the clouds were gone. They had simply disappeared. They had been there just a moment ago! Where did the clouds suddenly go?
The question stayed with me the whole walk, so on the way home we borrowed a great book about clouds from the library. When we got home, I immediately started reading the book. I learnt that clouds are made up of an infinite number of tiny water droplets or ice crystals – so small that you can’t see them individually.
When warm, moist air rises, it gets colder and colder. At some point, the air can no longer hold the water vapor. Then it attaches itself to tiny dust particles in the air. This is called condensation. The invisible water vapor turns into tiny droplets – and together we see them as clouds in the sky.
But clouds are not solid. When the air becomes warmer or drier again, the droplets dissolve. They become invisible and mix back into the air. The cloud isn’t really gone—it has simply dissolved.
It’s a bit like morning fog. First everything is gray, and then the sun shines and the fog dissipates. Clouds do the same thing—only high up in the sky.
Sometimes, however, clouds disappear for a completely different reason: the wind simply pushes them onward. Then they move to another place, as if on a little journey. From here, it looks as if they are gone, but they have only moved.
Now I know that when clouds disappear, they’re not just gone. They dissipate or move on. And maybe they’ll come back soon—as new clouds with new shapes that Mika and I can discover again.
Text: Lena Bruder, Illustration: Patrizia Schoch, Translation: Fathima Cherichi Purayil