The Teeming Life Inside the Sky’s Clouds

Clouds — sterile and soft, or filled with bacteria? Could you get sick from a cloud?

“Look at that cloud. Big ol’ disease factory, full o’ bacteria. Get tuberculosis as soon as you look it, I tell ya hwat.” Photo by Lÿv Jaan on Unsplash

When I was young, I was taught that clouds were big puffy bags of water in the sky, and that the rainwater that fell from them occasionally was the cleanest water that I could drink.

The logic made sense — after all, the only way that water got into the sky was if it evaporated. And when any water with impurities evaporates, like salt water, those impurities are left behind.

So it was quite a shock when I learned that, instead of being wonderful sources of sterile rainwater, clouds (and the rain that falls from them) are filled with bacteria.

How do bacteria get up there? What bacteria are present?

And, perhaps the scariest question of all, can we get sick from the bacteria found in clouds?

It’s time to ask some tall questions, think some lofty thoughts, and for once, it’s okay if our heads are in the clouds.

The Life In Clouds, and How They Get There

First off, it’s probably a good rule to operate under the assumption that bacteria exist just about everywhere on Earth. They’re in our mouths, on our skin, in the dirt, in the water… and, as you now know, in the sky.