Just the right person

It’s the most wonderful thing in the world (yeah you can hum that song if you want to)

Today I was chatting with a customer and he showed me his [local college] ID to ask about discounts. As we were chatting I asked (who knows why) “so, what do you teach?”

“Atmospheric sciences”

“oooh one of those weather guys.” I say. I’m all about the clouds.

“In fact,” says I, “I have one burning question about clouds and I’ve always hoped to meet the right person to ask. My question is: what keeps clouds together?”

“Oh,” he says, “the cloud itself keeps it together. Well, not exactly that, it’s more the air around the cloud keeps it together. So the cloud forms in the particular bit of air and the air that’s there keeps it in its form.”

OMG.

“So, the air around the cloud acts as a container for the cloud itself.” I summarize.

Yes – a container. That’s it exactly. In fact, he goes on, the clouds form at the bottom and the moisture moves up through the cloud and evaporates off the top.

OMG

We had a couple more minutes to chat about the color of clouds and what makes them “dark” (density of the water). He loves clouds so much he photoshops them into empty skies to improve the view. How extremely cool is that?

I cannot tell you how very long I’ve had that question. Now you know the answer too. (and it was cool that he said we could talk for hours about this stuff, which is totally true.)