Here is the story of Wally The Water Drop! It all started at Wally's house where he was eating watermelon peacefully with his son, Willy.

When Wally finished eating, he decided to go outside. He started getting hot and knew what was about to happen. Wally was going to travel through the water cycle! The first step was turning into water vapor!

When liquid water turns into water vapor, it is called evaporation. Evaporation is caused by the sun. When Wally went outside, the energy from the sun broke the bonds that hold Wally's water molecules together and turned them into water vapor. Wally then started to float up into the atmosphere as water vapor gas!

Once Wally was in the air, he started to move. The sun heated up the air which caused him and other water vapor to travel. Suddenly, Wally started getting cold. The tiny liquid particles inside Wally formed themselves and him into a cloud! The cold air the water vapor moved into cannot keep the water vapor as gas as easily as warm air can.

After being a cloud for a while, Wally felt like he was getting heavier. When water vapor condenses into water droplets, the droplets combine into heavier cloud drops. They keep combining until rain, snow, hail, or sleet falls. Those are all forms of precipitation. The air was warm that day so Wally fell as a rain drop. Gravity makes the precipitation fall down.

When Wally was falling as rain, he landed on a nearby mountain. Gravity forced him to slide down the mountain. When water runs down land it is called runoff. Wally was expecting to go into a river, but he got absorbed into the soil!