Weather & Sky — clouds, storms & climate
Why do clouds float, what makes lightning, how storms form, how snow is built and what climate means — five illustrated sky topics for curious 7–10 year-olds.
Ages 7–10
What's inside
Clouds — water that floats
A cloud looks like cotton wool you could lie on, but it is really made of billions of water droplets, each far too small to see. They are so light that the moving air holds them up, the way dust floats in a sunbeam. Every cloud you have ever seen started as water that quietly evaporated from the ground, a puddle or the sea.
Lightning — a spark in the sky
You know that tiny snap you sometimes feel when you touch a door handle? Lightning is exactly the same thing, only unimaginably bigger. It is a giant spark of electricity jumping through the air — and for a split second it is hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Storms — air in a hurry
A storm is not an angry monster: it is simply a lot of air moving in a hurry because the Sun heated one place more than another. Warm air rises, cooler air rushes in to take its place, and if there is plenty of moisture around, that rush becomes wind, rain and thunder. The truly good news is that we can now see almost every big storm forming days before it arrives.
Snow — lace made of ice
Snow is not frozen rain — raindrops that freeze on the way down are hail, which is quite different. A snowflake is a crystal that grows straight out of water vapour in a freezing cloud, building its own delicate pattern as it falls. And every single one of them has six sides. Always six.
Climate — weather’s big picture
Weather is what the sky is doing today; climate is what it usually does over many, many years. One rainy Tuesday tells you nothing about climate, but thirty years of Tuesdays tells you a lot. Scientists study climate to understand how our whole planet keeps itself comfortable — and how to keep it that way.
The Sun — the engine of all weather
Every kind of weather starts with one thing: the Sun. It is a giant ball of glowing gas so far away that its light takes eight minutes to reach you. When it warms the ground, the sea and the air, it sets everything in the sky in motion.
Rain — the sky giving water back
Rain is the sky handing water back to the ground so plants, rivers and you can drink. It begins as billions of tiny droplets floating inside a cloud, far too light to fall. Only when they join together into bigger drops do they finally tumble down.
Wind — air on the move
You cannot see wind, only what it does: leaves shiver, kites climb, washing flaps. Wind is simply air moving from one place to another. And air always moves for the same reason — because the Sun has warmed one patch more than another.
Rainbows — sunlight split into colours
A rainbow is one of the loveliest tricks the sky can play, and it needs just two things: sunshine and raindrops. When the Sun shines behind you while rain falls in front of you, its white light gets split into a curved band of colours. Nobody paints it — it is pure sunlight taken apart.
The Seasons — why the year has a rhythm
Spring, summer, autumn and winter come round every year like clockwork. Many people think it is because Earth moves closer to the Sun in summer, but that is not it at all. The real reason is that our planet is tilted, leaning over as it circles the Sun.
Fog and Mist — a cloud on the ground
Fog is just a cloud that has settled down at your own height instead of floating up high. Walking through it, you are actually walking through a cloud. It is made of the same thing as any cloud: millions of water droplets so tiny they hang in the air.
Frost — ice feathers on a cold morning
On a cold clear morning you might find grass, leaves and windows covered in delicate white feathers of ice. That is frost. It is not frozen rain that fell from the sky — it grows right there on the surface, out of the air itself.
Hail — ice balls from a storm
Hail is one of the strangest kinds of weather: solid balls of ice that fall even on a warm summer day. Each one is built high up inside a towering storm cloud. Cut a big hailstone in half and you will see rings, like the layers of an onion.
Thunder — the sound lightning makes
That deep rumble or sharp crack in a storm is thunder — but thunder is not really its own thing. It is the sound of lightning. Every clap you hear is made by the flash you just saw, even when the two seem far apart.
Hurricanes — giant spinning sea storms
A hurricane is the biggest, most powerful storm on Earth: a spinning wheel of cloud and wind hundreds of kilometres across. It is born over warm tropical oceans and can travel for days. From high above, it looks like a huge white spiral with a strange calm hole right in the middle.
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