In Surah Ar-Rum (30:48), the Quran declares: "It is Allah who sends the winds, and they stir the clouds and spread them in the sky however He wills, and He makes them fragments, and you see the rain emerge from within them."
This verse describes with remarkable precision the meteorological process of cloud and rain formation, a process that modern science only fully understood in the 20th century.
The verse describes several distinct stages:
1. The winds stir the clouds: winds transport water vapor evaporated from the oceans and push it upward where it condenses.
2. The clouds are spread in the sky: cumuliform clouds extend horizontally to form stratiform clouds.
3. The clouds are made into fragments: clouds fragment into distinct cumulus.
4. Rain emerges from within them: raindrops form inside clouds through condensation and coalescence, then fall.
Modern meteorology has confirmed each of these stages. The process of cumulonimbus cloud formation, which produces most rain, follows exactly this sequence described by the Quran 1400 years ago.
Professor Abdus Salam, Nobel Prize winner in physics, and other scientists have highlighted the precision of this Quranic description of the meteorological cycle.