We had a summer rain shower yesterday. Afterwards I could see steam rising off the street as the water evaporated. I could walk barefoot on that street before the shower and while the water was evaporating. If the water was boiling away, surely I wouldn’t be able to walk across it without scalding my foot.
What’s going on here?
In: Planetary Science
The sun doesn’t need to boil away the entire puddle in one go. It just needs to boil the individual molecules at the surface. And when those evaporate, boil the new surface. And so on until the puddle is done.
That’s how ocean water rises into the air to become clouds.
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