The Water cycle, the cycle through which oceans, rivers, lakes and much more are created.

Sitting bodies of water, like oceans or lakes or ponds evaporate water, due to the heat of the sun, the water vapor, now evaporated drifts upward and becomes the clouds, the clouds are condensed water vapor, condensed means concentrated, or packed together.

From the clouds we get, rain, which is the water it self, hail which is water risen up to a great freezing height, then freezing and falling to the ground, and snow, which is simply frozen water droplets, these 3 are “precipitation”, which is rain, snow, and hail.

Water can often travel the atmosphere as clouds, or condensation itself. From the precipitation melting, we get runoff, which is what it is, water running off, into streams, into rivers and into lakes and oceans, the reason precipitation falls to the ground, and the reason why runoff, streams and rivers flow downward is because of gravity.

When the runoff reaches streams or rivers those flow into oceans or into lakes, from lakes, it often flows into other rivers or evaporates back into the atmosphere, and if it does not do any of that, then it seeps into the ground, if it doesn’t run into a lake, rivers, streams, and groundwater all lead to the ocean, eventually being evaporated and restarting the cycle.

One of the most important and needed factors for making the cycle work is the sun, the sun’s energy heats the water and makes it evaporate and melt!