What is rain?

Rain is when water droplets fall from the sky to the ground.

Imagine you're playing with a water balloon on a hot day. The sun warms up the water in the balloon, and eventually, it pops, splat! Water goes everywhere. That’s kind of what happens with rain.

The sun heats up water from lakes, rivers, or oceans. This warm water turns into vapor, like steam rising from a hot pot. The vapor floats up into the sky and cools down. When it gets cool enough, it changes back into tiny droplets, just like when you breathe out on a cold day, and your breath becomes little clouds.

These droplets group together in the sky until they’re too heavy to stay up. Then whoosh! They fall down, that’s rain!

It's like when you take a sponge and squeeze it, water comes out. The sky is like a big, invisible sponge full of droplets. When it gets too full, the droplets come falling down to Earth, and plop! That’s how we get rain.