• Question: Why does it snow?

    Asked by asiansupreme to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 28 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by issi2001.
    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Snow is precipitation and is part of the water cycle which you might have learnt about at school…

      The water cycle basically governs that much water on Earth keep cycling round as follows: evaporation from rivers, seas, lakes and transpiration from living organisms gets water into the atmosphere. Here the water condenses and forms clouds (as the temperatures are quite low at this height, much of the condensed water is frozen into ice particles), which eventually break up and release the water to fall on earth as rain or snow or sleet (all these are called precipitation). Then it joins rivers and other water courses and we can start again.

      The reason why snow falls sometimes instead of rain is that if the temperature lower down in the atmosphere is cold enough, the ice that had formed in the clouds hasn’t got a chance to melt and falls to earth in the ice rather than the water form.

      Is this helpful?

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 5 Jul 2012:

      I think Blanka has covered it all – is there anything you want to ask about her answer?

Comments