With so many factors involved, it may seem impossible to predict what weather is on the horizon. If it finds more warm air and moisture - like a hurricane does as it moves across the ocean - it will grow and grow. Once a storm has formed, if there’s nowhere for it to get more moisture from the ground or the air, it will peter out as it lumbers along. These droplets are carried aloft by rising air, growing larger and larger until they become too heavy and fall back to Earth. As warm, moist air rises, it also cools, and its water condenses onto airborne particles such as dust. It’s not just fronts that can make it rain convection can also drive precipitation. Sometimes these cloudy clashes can cause rain, as the cooling warm air is forced to drop its water. When regions of air with different temperatures and densities meet, the boundary is called a front. Weather is simply the byproduct of our atmosphere moving heat from one place to another.Ĭooler air is dense and can’t hold much moisture warmer air is less dense and can hold more water. As air flows from one place to another, it carries its properties with it, changing the temperature, humidity and more. This air, like liquid water, behaves as a fluid. To do that, we must look to the sky.Įarth is enveloped in an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor. Making the Weatherīefore we can predict the weather, we have to understand where it comes from. And meteorologists in pursuit of an ever-more-perfect forecast continue to push what’s possible toward its theoretical limit.

In reality, weather forecasts have improved in leaps and bounds in just the past few decades. You’ve probably heard the joke: Meteorology is the only occupation where you can be wrong all the time and still get paid for it. “Storms and all the other interesting things that Earth’s atmosphere brings us have this big effect on our daily lives in a lot of ways.” But even though we tune in to local news stations or check apps to find out what the weather will bring, we don’t always trust the forecasts. “It’s what’s going on in the atmosphere all around us all the time,” says Russ Schumacher, Colorado State climatologist and director of the Colorado Climate Center. Few things in our lives are as universal as the weather. Those two simple words can ruin picnic plans or herald rescue for drought-stricken crops.

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