Re: If the top of Mt Everest is above the clouds, how can there be snow on it?

A thoughtful question Simona.

Much of the time Everest is above the clouds...but sometimes it is within them instead. This is when heavy snows blanket the mountain top and faces. Actually, Everest is thought to get relatively little precipitation. Snow that does fall from year to year builds up it as it rarely gets a chance to melt. Take a close look at some pictures of Everest (this link takes you to MtEvere st.com, one of several Everest sites on the web) and you'll see lots of rocks. There is almost no soil on the higher elevations of the mountain.

You might be interested to know that because the mountain can only be climbed during a short time each year, not much is really known about the weather on Everest. A group from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) built and deployed a number of weather probes on the mountain in the late 1990s. You can read about their probes and what they learned on their Mt. Everest Weather Probe Project site.