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.
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