This Thanksgiving, how many turkeys would a cloud weigh?
Turkey cloud over Milwaukee in our theoretical scenario
MILWAUKEE - To click on this article you're either a weather nerd, or you really need to be distracted from family for Thanksgiving. Either way, we're here to help with this important question: How many turkeys does a cloud weigh?
Right off the bat, we'll be making all kinds of assumptions in this article, since we have yet to see an actual turkey cloud form in real life. But hey, it's 2023, anything is possible.
First, we have to agree on how big the cloud is. Clouds are a lot bigger than you think and, for the sake of math, let's make this a nice fair-weather cumulus cloud you might see this Thanksgiving.
SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News
On a day like Thursday, Nov. 23 – with a cloud at 5,000 feet – it wouldn't be all that surprising if that cloud was a kilometer wide, a kilometer long, and half a kilometer tall. That would give the cloud a total volume of 500 million cubic meters.
In this scenario, we can now assume a total volume of our turkey cloud, but now it's time to determine the weight of it. This is where even more assumptions will have to be made.
For a cloud to form, the air has to be saturated or have humidity at 100%. To do that, the temperature has to be equal to the dewpoint. If our dewpoint is at the forecasted 30 degrees, it won't be that hard to calculate – but the problem is we're 5,000 feet in the air. This means the air density and pressure is less than it is at the surface, so we have to solve for the specific humidity at that elevation to determine how much water is in a cubic meter.
Using the equation for specific humidity as being equal to – (.622*vapor pressure of water)/(atmospheres of pressure at 5000ft minus vapor pressure of water) – with a dewpoint at 30 degrees, you end up with a specific humidity of .00407.
Now we can put it all together! The amount of water in a cubic meter of air is equal to the specific humidity multiplied by the density of air. Assuming the density of air at a height of 5,000 feet is around .736 kilograms per cubic meter (more assumptions being made), we get a total mass of water per cubic meter to be around .00299 kilograms.
FOX6 Storm Center app; free download packed with powerful weather tools
Lastly, how much does a turkey weigh? Well, there's a variation, and for the sake of my calculator blowing up, let's say it's 11 pounds or 5 kilograms. If we proportionally had the same amount of turkey for the same amount of water in each cubic meter of our theoretical cloud, that would give us around .000598 turkeys per cubic meter of cloud.
From the beginning, using an assumption of a cloud with a volume of 500 million cubic meters, we can multiply that by the weight of turkeys per cubic meter and get around 299,000 turkeys. So our theoretical turkey cloud roughly weighs 299,000 turkeys!
Aren't you glad you read this instead of talking to your family? If you're a meteorology professor and disagree with our math, please let us know.
FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX6 News app for iOS or Android.
But wait there's more! But I'm too tired to truly calculate this…
We assumed the cloud was a half-kilometer tall. The pressure would vary from the bottom of the cloud to the top, thus we'd have a different density of air and, thus, as you go up in our turkey cloud we would need fewer turkeys. So the answer is probably less, but for the sake of generalization, it's around 299,000.
And for some reason, because you kept reading: How much would the turkey cloud cost? According to Morningstar, an investment company, the average turkey in 2023 cost $1.71 per pound. If each turkey is around 11 pounds in our cloud, then the cloud turkey would cost about $3,289,000.