How the same water has been recycled for billions of years: rising into the sky, forming clouds, falling as rain, and driving nearly all the weather you experience. A picture for every idea.
a loop with no beginning or end
Earth doesn't make new water. It just moves the same water around, endlessly. The water in your glass has been an ocean, a cloud, a river, and rain countless times over billions of years. The whole system is one giant loop powered by the Sun, lifting water up and letting gravity bring it back down.
evaporation
The Sun heats oceans, lakes, and rivers, and the warmth turns liquid water into an invisible gas (water vapor) that floats upward into the air. This is evaporation: the same thing that dries a wet towel or a puddle on a hot day. Warm air can carry a lot of this hidden moisture.
condensation
High in the sky it's cold, and cold air can't hold as much moisture. So the vapor cools and clumps back into countless tiny water droplets, gathering around specks of dust. Billions of these floating droplets together are exactly what a cloud is. This clumping is called condensation, like the fog that forms on a cold glass.
precipitation
Inside a cloud, droplets keep bumping and merging into bigger drops. Eventually they get too heavy to float, and gravity pulls them down as rain (or, if it's cold enough, snow or hail). This is precipitation. The water then flows over land into streams and rivers, and most of it eventually returns to the sea, where the loop begins again.
evaporate → condense → fall → return
Put it together and you have the water cycle: the Sun lifts water up, it forms clouds, falls as rain or snow, gathers into rivers, and flows back to the sea, forever. Every step is just water changing form (liquid → gas → liquid) and changing place (down → up → down).
heat, air, and water mixed together
Weather is mostly the water cycle interacting with heat and moving air. The Sun warms some areas more than others; warm air rises and cool air rushes in to replace it: that's wind. Where warm, moist air meets cooler air, water condenses fast and you get clouds, rain, and storms. Because tiny differences snowball unpredictably (true chaos), forecasts get fuzzier the further out they go, though they've gotten remarkably good for the next few days.
The same water is recycled forever in a loop powered by the Sun.
Evaporation: the Sun turns water into invisible vapor that rises.
Condensation: up high it cools into tiny droplets that form clouds.
Precipitation: droplets merge, grow heavy, and fall as rain or snow.
It returns via rivers to the sea, and the loop starts over.
Weather is this cycle plus heat and moving air: chaotic, but forecastable short-term.