I understand how rain works, but how does rainfall become slow or fast? How is it possible that during the same rain shower the pace with which the drops fall varies? So basically the difference between pouring and drizzling from the same cloud.
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Fog and cloud droplets don’t fall at all, because their weight is too low to overcome air currents. Huge drops fall fast, because they have a lot more mass and can overcome the air resistance to a higher degree. Between these two extremes, we have all sorts of raindrop speeds according to size.
Raindrops form when the cloud is so dense that non-falling droplets keep crashing into one another, getting bigger and beginning to saunter vaguely downwards. As their weight and speed increases, they’ll hit and collect more and more tiny droplets, grow and fall faster, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Eventually they fall out of the bottom of the cloud, and stop growing. If the cloud is very dense and tall, they can grow a lot before leaving it. If it’s not, the rain is less intense.
Clouds move, and the rain in the middle of the cloud is much heavier (as there is more water there to collect into drops). So depending on which part of a cloud is moving overhead, the rain intensity changes.
Fog and cloud droplets don’t fall at all, because their weight is too low to overcome air currents. Huge drops fall fast, because they have a lot more mass and can overcome the air resistance to a higher degree. Between these two extremes, we have all sorts of raindrop speeds according to size.
Raindrops form when the cloud is so dense that non-falling droplets keep crashing into one another, getting bigger and beginning to saunter vaguely downwards. As their weight and speed increases, they’ll hit and collect more and more tiny droplets, grow and fall faster, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Eventually they fall out of the bottom of the cloud, and stop growing. If the cloud is very dense and tall, they can grow a lot before leaving it. If it’s not, the rain is less intense.
Fog and cloud droplets don’t fall at all, because their weight is too low to overcome air currents. Huge drops fall fast, because they have a lot more mass and can overcome the air resistance to a higher degree. Between these two extremes, we have all sorts of raindrop speeds according to size.
Raindrops form when the cloud is so dense that non-falling droplets keep crashing into one another, getting bigger and beginning to saunter vaguely downwards. As their weight and speed increases, they’ll hit and collect more and more tiny droplets, grow and fall faster, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Eventually they fall out of the bottom of the cloud, and stop growing. If the cloud is very dense and tall, they can grow a lot before leaving it. If it’s not, the rain is less intense.
Clouds move, and the rain in the middle of the cloud is much heavier (as there is more water there to collect into drops). So depending on which part of a cloud is moving overhead, the rain intensity changes.
Clouds move, and the rain in the middle of the cloud is much heavier (as there is more water there to collect into drops). So depending on which part of a cloud is moving overhead, the rain intensity changes.
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