Discover, September 29 2010.
If you were to calculate how much a hurricane weighs, what units would you pick? To understand how much water is in a cloud, it seems many researchers pick the good ole elephant unit, or sometimes a blue whale.
Choosing some of the largest animals on the planet gives everyone a better sense of just how much water is up there in the clouds. Calculating the number of elephants in a small white puffy cloud will start to give you a sense of just how many elephants to expect from your average hurricane.
Andy Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told NPR’s science correspondent Robert Krulwich that a single, small, white, cotton-ball cloud weighs about the same as 100 (4-ton) elephants. Read More >