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The sun doesn't heat the atmosphere; it heats the land and the sea. Above it, a thin layer of air is warmed up by contact. That air rises. Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water. Right above it, the air is saturated with water molecules in form of vapour.

When that moist air is warm, it rises because warm air is less dense than cold one. As it rises, it cools down by the so-called adiabatic effect of a lesser pressure aloft.

Cold air can contain less vapour than warm one. At a stage, the moisture must condense as clouds. As the air keeps rising because now, the so-called wet adiabatic lapse rate is lesser than the dry one, the moisture continues to condense as larger and larger drops.

Those keep rising but, at one moment, gravitation if greater than the speed of rising and the droplets come down, forming precipitation; rain or snow.

If the air aloft is very cold, the convection (rising air) is so strong that the drops of rain keep rising all the way to a point where they freeze. Finally, they come down but now it is as hail. That happens often in a very strong convection such as a thunderstorm.

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