The Sun warms water in oceans, lakes, rivers, and puddles. Some of that liquid water becomes invisible water vapor and rises into the air.
Fun fact: Water vapor is a gas, so you cannot see it floating in the air.
Follow water from sunny surfaces into clouds and back to Earth as rain.
How Does Rain Happen?
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Higher up, the air is often cooler. Water vapor changes back into tiny drops of liquid water, and many of those drops make a cloud.
Fun fact: A cloud is made of tiny water drops or ice crystals, not water vapor alone.
Tiny cloud drops bump together and grow. When a drop becomes too heavy to stay in the cloud, it falls as rain.
Fun fact: Raindrops are shaped more like tiny hamburger buns than teardrops as they fall.
Rain is not the end of the trip. Water can flow into a stream, soak underground, travel through a plant, and return to the sky. Earth keeps recycling water.
Fun fact: The water cycle needs no tiny recycling bin!