SURAH AL A’RAAF (THE HEIGHTS): AYAT 57 (QURAN 7:57)
SURAH AR RA’D (THE THUNDER): AYAT 12 (QURAN 13:12)
Clouds come in various shapes and sizes. Majestic as they float seemingly weightless in the sky in a multitude of unique patterns. Prevailing thought for generations was that clouds were almost weightless or “lighter” than air. They are floating in the air like a balloon filled with helium? If you tie a helium balloon to a kitchen scale it won’t register any weight, so why should a cloud?
Since air has weight it must also have density, which is the weight for a chosen volume, such as a cubic inch or cubic meter. If clouds are made up of particles, then they must have weight and density. The key to why clouds float is that the density of the same volume of cloud material is less than the density of the same amount of dry air. Just as oil floats on water because it is less dense, clouds float on air because the moist air in clouds is less dense than dry air. So clouds are not nearly weightless as was theorized.
Take for example a typical Cumulus cloud – One estimate of cumulus cloud density is given at https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-how-much-a-cloud-weighs, as a density of about 0.5 gram per cubic meter. A 1 cubic kilometer (km3) cloud contains 1 billion cubic meters. Doing the math (according to the United States Geological Survey) : 1,000,000,000 x 0.5 = 500,000,000 grams of water droplets in the cloud. That is about 500,000 kilograms or 1.1 million pounds (about 551 tons). But, that “heavy” cloud is floating over your head because the air below it is even heavier— the lesser density of the cloud allows it to float on the dryer and more-dense air.
Approximately 1.1 million pounds! Simply astonishing and a relatively recent meteorologic fact.
The Quran states:
“And it is He who sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy until, when they have carried heavy rainclouds . . .” (Surah A’raf, 7:57)
“It is He who shows you lightening, [causing] fear and aspiration, and generates the heavy clouds.” (Surah Ra’d, 13:12)
The key words that should be noted in these two ayats is that Allah(SWT) mentions clouds as being heavy. “Thikal ثِّقَالَ” means heavy. Here the clouds have weight. Today we know that clouds are not weightless as previously thought but rather are very heavy.
Nearly 1400 years ago and even today people may look upon clouds and it may seem as if they are extremely light due to floating at such high altitudes, but Allah (SWT) accurately describes the weight of the clouds as heavy!