Question: why does it rain,snow and get cold and hot

Rosie Cane answered on 15 Jun 2017:

Big question here. Okay lets start with rain. It’s important to start with the fact that there are always tiny drops of water vapor in the air. Warm air rises, and when it does the water droplets rise too, forming clouds. If a lot of water droplets gather in the clouds, the clouds become heavy. Gravity (that force that brings you back down to the ground again if you jump up in the air!) causes the water droplets to fall as rain, and we all have to get our umbrellas out!

Snow is formed when the water vapour in the air freezes, which happens when the temperature in the clouds is very cold. Snowflakes are made up of crystals of ice that have formed around bits of dirt in the air. The snowflakes start out very small and grow as they fall down towards earth, turning from an icy drop to a pretty hexagon shape (if you’ve ever made paper snowflakes you’ll know straight away the shape I mean!).

The temperature being either cold or hot usually depends on the seasons; summer, autumn, winter and spring. This comes from the Earth travelling around the Sun once every year. As the Earth travels, its position in relation to the Sun changes. So when the Earth is facing towards the sun, it is summer for us and it is hot. And when the Earth is facing away from the sun, it is winter for us and it is cold!