I noticed that it’s cloudy when it rains but most of the time it stays in the sky. But, what about fog? What is the difference between fog and cloudy skies? And what makes fog descend?
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Fog is, as others have said, essentially a cloud on the ground. That is, it is air that has gotten so (relatively) cold that it can’t hold all the water it did before. Like a sponge, the cooling air squeezes out the water until it drops out. With dust and even other water molecules in the air, water starts to fond things to condense on, forming what is essentially a cloud!
Steam is technically a cloud, as the superheated water vapor immediately starts to condense in the cooler air above the boiling water.
It is too close to the ground to build up a charge differential between it and the ground as part of “the cloud” as an object is, relatively, in contact with the ground. This allows it to shed electrons without the massive buildup and discharge we see in a vloud that is separated by a large layr of an insulator. That is, air.
Dew, then, is like ground level rain. It is water that condensed out of the cloud and landed on the ground… But because the ground is *in* the cloud, the drops just condense right on it without having to condense into a drop in the sky and fall first.
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