by:Ellen Bacca
Mammatus clouds over Allendale on April 20, 2020. (Kieth Schuiteman/ReportIt)
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — It' no secret that weather clouds are beautiful and come in all shapes and sizes. Still, while they can look very different, they all need the same basic ingredients to form.
Essentially, clouds are made of water droplets. Their size and shape changes depending on the wind, the water available and the source of lift causing them to form.
Most thunderstorm clouds are huge and lumpy because they are formed by the sun heating the ground or a weather front shoving them high into the sky. Stratus clouds, on the other hand, are long and flat due to the more stable conditions they are formed in.
MAKE YOUR OWN CLOUD
You can create your own cloud at home by combining some of the same ingredients that are found in nature when a cloud is created. The steps below are courtesy of theNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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