Originally Posted by JohnD

It's this "release of latent heat" bit that gets me - no heat is released!
Water vapour is maintained as vapour until something takes energy from it!

But I think I see your point about the latent heat allowing a heat/pressure gradient to be maintained longer and greater than if there were no vaopour in the air.

Respect to Praed, but any real meteorologists to sort me out?

John