On Mar 3, 1:27*pm, Andrew Sarangan wrote:

I am not sure how you came to the conclusion that air is less dense in
the cloud than the surrounding air. Density decreases with increasing
moisture for unsaturated air, but once the air is saturated (clouds),
any excess moisture is suspended as tiny droplets, and the average
density will start to increase. Darker the cloud, the higher the
density. This is why you need an updraft to hold these clouds up. When
the density gets too large to overcome the updrafts, you get rain, and
the density returns to normal.- Hide quoted text -

While I plan to ask on a meteorological forum when I get home, play
with me a sec...

I am not talking about small clouds vs big rain making clouds. What I
am talking about is the density of the air comparing VMC to IMC at an
established level of flight.

If that cloud was "denser" then the surrounding air (as you can see in
the video, it was a sparse cloud cover), then why doesn't the cloud
sink if that parcel of air is heavier (denser) then the surrounding
air?

Winds aloft were 35 knots so surely, the updraft time was extremely
minimal and I would say none, since I didn't get any lifting feeling
in the seat of my pants in penetrating that volkswagon size puffy.

When I googled the topic, it talked mainly of stratiform clouds, and
that layer being less dense below the cloud deck, which I already
understand the higher you go, the less dense the air. This is
probably where I got my initial impressions that the air in clouds is
less dense.

Allen