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: “I think the dimensions are somewhat
deceiving,” clouds, he says, look small when you are down on the
ground, but very often they are much bigger than you think.
Doctors have long known that food, alcohol, stress, and hormones
can cause migraines. And now, research shows that weather can
too. For years weather-