Why do clouds need to come together into large, darker masses when it rains instead of the individual water droplets just randomly falling on their own?
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Most puffy white clouds (cumulus clouds) are made up of very small drops of water. It’s more of a mist than a collection of droplets. Natural updrafts in the atmosphere see them suspended in the air. When rainclouds or thunderstorms form (cumulonimbus clouds) these small water droplet bumps into a bigger ones, and combines into a larger one. As this continues to happen, the droplet gets heavier and heavier. When the water droplet becomes too heavy to continue floating around in the cloud, it falls to the ground.
This is also why bigger droplets fall during more severe storms. The extreme updrafts in these stronger storms can keep the water up in the air longer, so they can get bigger/heavier before they fall from the sky.
Clouds do not come together. Rather the process which drives the condensation pushes them to expand. Rain is caused by excessive condensation which in turn is caused by rising air. If it is just a little bit, you get nice white fluffy clouds. When this continues, clouds gradually turn darker because they become thicker and block the sunlight. And finally, there comes the rain.
The air is always full of water, within certain pressure and temperature ranges this water is invisible (Think of a hot humid day, that humidity is literally water suspended in the air) when temperatures drop or air pressure increases it begins to cause this moisture to condense creating clouds or fog, this condensation is many tiny droplets of water that are so small they are easily suspended by air currents, as light hits all these droplets it gets diffused giving clouds their white look but as the air continues to cool more and more water condenses less light is able to get through giving the clouds a darker look and after enough water condenses in an area it start joining together at which point it’s density is high enough that the air currents can no longer hold it up and it falls to the ground as rain
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