I’ll tell you something I truly love: clouds. Their variety in shape and color is virtually infinite. They are beautiful. They give us shade. In cold weather, a cloudy night helps keep us warm. Added to all that and more is their most vital function: rain.
If you were given the assignment to provide irrigation for, let’s say every square foot of Burke County, Georgia’s second largest, how would you do it? What would your water source be? How many miles of pipe would you need? How big would the pumps need to be, and what kind of fuel would power them? How noisy would they be? What about breakdowns? How much money would be needed to fund this project? Clearly, the project would be quite an engineering challenge. But what if the assignment was all of Georgia? Or the entire United States? Or the whole Western Hemisphere?
Of course, the reality is the irrigation assignment is the entire surface of planet Earth. All of it. Even the hottest, driest deserts get rain once in a while. There are no noisy pumps. There is no piping. There is no maintenance required. Instead, these massive accumulations of water vapor called clouds drift slowly by overhead. The weight of the water in a single large cumulus cloud is in the millions of pounds. As they silently float around the Earth, they periodically shed the water vapor they have accumulated, downloading hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in droplet form. Even the most delicate flower or new seedling is rarely damaged. The cost: there is no cost. It’s all free.
Don’t you just love clouds?
