Why are rain clouds dark?
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Abstracts from the June 2009 issue Asia Pacific edition of Reader Digest Why are rain clouds dark? Rain is water. Water is light in colour. Rain clouds are full of water. ...show more
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Answer:
"Do you think the reasoning is appropriate to the fact?" Yes very much so. "Or the darkness is just shadow?" - "When water particles become large enough to form raindrops, however, they absorb light and appear dark to us below." Same thing... because the light is absorbed it produces shadowing.
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Other answers
Clouds are always light when viewed from above. The more they reflect light, the darker is the space below them. Larger droplets both reflect more light and absorb more, but from above it still looks totally white. When in a plane flying above the clouds we see a storm centre as a boil up of clouds, still white. The time that those boil-up clouds look dark is when we happen to see them with the sun shining through them, as when the sun is close to horizon.
donfletcheryh
when the particles formed it will be thickened and heavy,,, and the rain gonna start... when the clouds getting thick it overlapped the light from the sun,,, so we gonna see the difference from the other clouds it is more darker,,, thats all...
yu_la
There was a cloud prog being shown a while ago and it was said the reason clouds are dark in colour is becaiuse they are heavy with water that carries dirt, sand, etc.
jupiteress
Sounds reasonable. I would have said that rain clouds are thicker and that each little particle of water absorbs some tiny amount of light. Thicker clouds have more water particles, and so absorb more light, and hence appear darker. But I suspect my theory only works if the sun is directly above the cloud. I had never heard that the water particles in rain clouds are bigger than in normal clouds, but that certainly makes sense -- they have to be in the process of getting bigger to form rain drops. And if that's the case, your theory makes more sense. It could also be that larger water particles have a different index of refraction. Maybe instead of absorbing the light, it is simply refracting it in a different direction.
McNeef
Because they're loaded with humidity.
Lelar
because they're full of rain water
derred
Probably the latter. Rain clouds are unbelievably high, and appear like normal from above. But from below, there's often so much water with so much dust, carbon, etc. inside of the cloud, it blocks out the suns light.
D
the dark is the dirty rain waiting to fall.
Kyle
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