While driving around Monday evening with my kids in the pouring rain, I thought it was a good time to explain to them that nearly all raindrops are melted snowflakes. Yes, I’ve blogged about that before, but that’s not the main part of this blog entry.

Well, first you have to understand that my oldest is only 7. My 5 year old daughter thought that she would rather have snowflakes than rain right now and my 2 year old daughter was too busy watching Clifford on the DVD player to even listen anyway.

But my son decided to keep asking questions. I had opened a can of worms on that one. How does a cloud make all of the raindrops? Why does it make so many?

I decided that I would try to relate the answer to how the air was rising right now and as it rises it cools down and becomes a cloud and then the moisture is forced out of the cloud and snowflakes are created (I decided to spare my young son the full explanation of the Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process for tonight). Then he asked me why the air was rising.

I pondered how I could answer the question at his level regarding the troughs in the jetstream flow helping to lift the air to the east of the trough axis…and, of course, do this while driving. So, after much reflection I ended the questioning with, “It just is.”

The tougher lessons can wait a few more days.