| Share|Cite

Weather
Moisture and Humidity

Weather
Partly to Mostly Cloudy
Moisture and Humidity
In the Clouds
Ten Major Cloud Types
Forecasting by Clouds
In all my years of teaching and talking about the weather, I have never encountered a concept more difficult to grasp
than humidity. In fact, if you make it through, the rest will be a breeze.
Let's start off by recognizing that water can exist in three different states: solid, liquid, and vapor. All states consist of
the molecule H2O; the only difference concerns the spacing of the molecules. The following figure depicts these
different states. As a solid, the water molecules are closest together. As a vapor, the molecules are farthest apart. So
the whole humidity story hinges on what makes these molecules drift apart, or come together.