Ever wonder about the weather and where rain and snow come from? Or where they go?

Our planet has weather cycles. These short term changes in the atmosphere cause clouds to form and rain to fall. Climate is over long periods of time. Climate averages are usually 30 years of data for a particular region. We will talk about climate in a later edition so stay tuned!

There are many other ways of understanding and interpreting the weather around us.

Below are a couple of other ways we understand and interpret weather. Click on the image to find out more. Can you find others?

Bear and Rabbit: How Winter Came to Be
Told by Jerry Kanim Illustrated by Nik-Ko-Te St.Onge

Evaporation is the process where bodies of water like oceans, lakes and rivers are warmed by the sun causing tiny water droplets, called water vapor, to break away and rise into the atmosphere where they cool and join back together forming clouds.

Check out this short video to see how rain is formed.

This is not the only way that water droplets find their way into the atmosphere. Trees and plants give off water vapor too in a process called transpiration.

Transpiration happens from all plants but it is very noticeably seen in tropical or temperate rainforests where vegetation is dense. Low clouds and fog can seem to spring up from nowhere in places like the tropical Amazon Rainforest.

We even have temperate rainforests right here in Washington State!

Precipitation happens when the condensing vapor in the atmosphere, that formed the clouds earlier, becomes too heavy to stay in the atmosphere. It then falls back to earth in the form of rain, snow and even hail.

Check out these videos to get see how much wind and rain different areas of the globe get.

Want to find out how much rain falls at your home? You can make a simple rain gauge like the one in the video below.  After you've made a rain gauge, you can measure the rain that falls every day for one month.

It rains a whopping 41 inches in Tacoma each year but what about other places in the world? Hover over the rectangles to find out.

Draw or create a rainy day image and share your picture with us! Here are some examples

The water that falls back to earth is all trying to get back down to the lowest point, sea level, through collection. Rivers and streams visibly carry water from really high places eventually to the oceans and lakes. Glaciers and snow pack travel too, but at a much slower rate. There is also a hidden source of water right below our feet. Groundwater is underneath us and also slowly heads to sea level

Where Does the Rain Go?

How Does Water Move?