Snow, Rain, And Hail

Why Clouds Stay Up

Clouds do not descend immediately after being formed, for several reasons.

1. They are made up of ice particles or water droplets that are very small.

This gives them a lot of surface area relative to their density.

This gives them less force to break through the air resistance below them.

2. The winds are usually stronger against the earth where the air mass is coarser than at the top where the air subtler.

This is why the wind:

• acts on the earth more from bottom to top than from top to bottom.
• supports the earth-aether particles and make them rise above the region of the air where they are found.

The same can also be done by the vapors which come out of the earth.

• They swell the air that is under them.
• The mere heat of this air expands them and pushes them back.
• The coldness of the air above tightens and attracts them

The ice particles are then pushed against each other by the winds.

They touch each other without uniting completely for that.

• They compose a body so decompressed, light, and extended
• If no heat comes to melt some of its parts and by this means condense and weigh it down, it can almost never descend to the ground.

But water is in some way dilated by cold when it freezes.

And so the heat, which usually decompresses other bodies, ordinarily condenses the body of clouds.

Snow is of the same material as clouds, but more condensed.

When placed in a warm place, the snow shrinks before any water comes out of it, or it decreases in weight.

This happens because the extremities of its ice particles are more delicate than the rest.

The agitation of the fire-aether around them causes them to bend and move, as though alive. This is known as melting.

They then slip and attach themselves to the neighboring ice particles without detaching themselves from those to which they are already joined. This brings them closer to each other.

The cloud’s particles are usually farther apart than those the snow’s particles on the ground. This is why the cloud particles cannot approach their neighbors without moving away from some others at the same time.

This makes them divide afterwards into several small heaps or flakes, having previously been equally scattered through the air. These become bigger when:

• more of the cloud’s particles have been tightened, and
• the slower the heat.

Even when some wind, or some expansion of all the air that is above the cloud, or some other such cause makes the highest of these flakes descend first, they attach themselves to those below which they meet on their way, and thus make them bigger.

After which the heat, by condensing and weighing them down more and more, can easily make them descend to the ground.

When they descend thus without being completely melted, they compose snow.

But if the air through which they pass is so hot that it melts them, as it always is during the summer, and very often also in other seasons in our climate, they are converted into rain.

How Hail is Formed

Sometimes the rain passes through some cold wind which freezes them again, turning them into hail.

This hail can be of several kinds.

1. Round and transparent ice grains

This happens when the cold wind that causes it meets already-formed water droplets. But these grains are sometimes a little flat on the side where the wind pushes them.

2. Horned, irregular hail

This happens when the snowflakes are almost melted, but not yet rounded into water droplets.

This leads to various irregular shapes. Some are very large because they are formed by a cold wind which drives the cloud from top to bottom. This pushes several of its flakes against each other and freezes them all into one mass.

When this wind approaches these melting flakes, it causes the heat of the air that surrounds them to withdraw into their pores, because it cannot penetrate them at all so quickly.

This is similar to how a sudden wind or rain cools the outside air, causing more heat than before to enter the houses.

The heat in the pores of these flakes is held towards their surfaces than their centers. This is because the air-aether which causes it, can better continue its movements there.

There, it melts them more and more a little before they start to freeze again.

Even their most liquid (the most agitated) particles that are found elsewhere, also tend towards there.

While those that do not have time to melt remain in the center.

Hail is ordinarily composed of a continuous and transparent ice.

But here, the outside of each grain of this hail has a little snow in the middle, as you can see by breaking them.

And because it almost never falls except in summer, this will assure you that the clouds can then be composed of ice particles as well as in winter.

Hail does not fall in winter, at least whose grains are a little large, because there is hardly enough heat reaching the clouds for this effect.

This is except when they are so low that their matter being melted, or almost melted, would not have time to freeze again before descending to the ground.

If the snow is not yet so melted, but only a little warmed and softened, when the cold wind, which converts it into hail, comes, it does not become transparent at all, but remains white like sugar.

If the flakes of this snow are small enough, like the size of a pea or below, each one is converted into a hailstone that is quite round. But if they are larger, they split and divide into several grains all pointed in the shape of pyramids.

For the heat, which withdraws into the pores of these flakes at the moment when a cold wind begins to surround them, condenses and tightens all their parts, by pulling from their circumferences towards their centers, which makes them become quite round; and the cold, penetrating them immediately afterwards, and freezing them, makes them much harder than snow.

When they are a little large, their internal heat continues to make their inner parts tighten and condense. They always pull towards the center, after the outer ones are so hardened and frozen by the cold that they cannot follow them.

They necessarily split inside, following planes or straight lines that tend towards the center. Their cracks increase more and more as the cold penetrates further, so that finally they burst and divide into several pointed pieces, which are as many hailstones.