Why does it rain heavily but ends quickly while less heavy rain last a long time?
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Cold fronts and Warm fronts. A cold front is when colder, drier, denser air moves in on a warmer, moister, lighter air and shoves the warmer air up. Those produce your nastier weather situations, heavy rains, hail, tornadoes, what have you.
But warm fronts are where the warmer air climbs up over the top of the colder air and forms longer clouds and where we normally see the higher clouds before the beginning of those storms.
Again very general statement, but everything from wind speed to pressure difference will render different results.
Rain comes from clouds. Clouds are like buckets. To empty a bucket, you can dump it all out at once (heavy rain) or let it trickle out (light rain). Letting it trickle out takes longer, so the rain lasts longer.
This is an imperfect analogy, but it works for eli5.
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