How does precipitation form from water droplets in a cloud

The side of the mountains where the wind blows away is called the leeward side. This can also happen without a dramatic mountain range, just when air travels over land that slopes upward and is forced to rise. The air cools as it rises, and eventually clouds form. Other types of clouds, such as cumulus clouds, form above mountains too as air is warmed at the ground and rises.

Clouds also form when air is forced upward at areas of low pressure. Winds meet at the center of the low pressure system and have nowhere to go but up.

All types of clouds are formed by these processes, especially altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, stratocumulus, or stratus clouds. The sun heats the surface, which produces plumes of buoyant rising air. Given sufficient water vapor to reach saturation, clouds can form at the tops of the rising plumes. When condensation occurs, the heat that is given off warms the air and can cause more lifting and more cloud.

At the same time, the mixing of cloudy air with the clear air in its environment, and the descent of at least some of the cloudy air, cause cloud droplets to evaporate.

Depending on environmental conditions, the cloud may continue to grow for some time and possibly produce rain or become a thunderstorm. More often, however, the cloud will dissipate, owing to mixing or descent. If temperature increases so rapidly with height that clouds cannot grow vertically, stratiform clouds occur. These clouds can persist for longer periods of time perhaps days because they are often in regions of general lifting and high humidity.

Similarly, cirriform clouds can also be long-lived, since, like stratiform clouds, they are usually layered, and ice crystals vaporize more slowly than water droplets evaporate. Thus, clouds have some similarity with smoke in the air or dye in a glass of water, but significant differences exist, too.

In all cases, turbulence in the fluid tends to diffuse, or mix out the tracer. A major difference between smoke and water clouds, however, is that a water cloud can continue to generate more and bigger droplets by condensation if it is rising, and cloud droplets can evaporate if the cloud is sinking.

In contrast, if smoke is introduced into the atmosphere above the turbulent layer near the surface, it can persist within a well-defined layer for many days, as exemplified by plumes from forest fires, power plants or volcanoes, which can inject smoke well above the surface.

It fell on July 23, in Vivian, South Dakota. It was 8 inches in diameter, That could put a real dent in your day! Hail can cause a lot of damage to buildings, cars, and especially crops. However, freezing rain can be even worse. Freezing rain occurs when the conditions are just "right.

Now, when the super-cooled rain hits colder-than-freezing ground and objects near the ground such as roads, trees, and power lines —snap!

Just like that, the about-to-freeze rain turns to ice. The ice coats everything with a thin, sometimes transparent, frozen film. This lists the logos of programs or partners of NG Education which have provided or contributed the content on this page.

Powered by. Precipitation is any type of water that forms in the Earth's atmosphere and then drops onto the surface of the Earth. Water vapor , droplets of water suspended in the air, builds up in the Earth's atmosphere. Water vapor in the atmosphere is visible as cloud s and fog. Water vapor collects with other materials, such as dust , in clouds.

Precipitation condense s, or forms, around these tiny pieces of material, called cloud condensation nuclei CCN. Clouds eventually get too full of water vapor, and the precipitation turns into a liquid rain or a solid snow. Precipitation is part of the water cycle. Precipitation falls to the ground as snow and rain. It eventually evaporate s and rises back into the atmosphere as a gas.

In clouds, it turns back into liquid or solid water, and it falls to Earth again. People rely on precipitation for fresh water to drink, bathe, and irrigate crops for food.

The most common types of precipitation are rain, hail , and snow. Rain Rain is precipitation that falls to the surface of the Earth as water droplets. Raindrops form around microscopic cloud condensation nuclei, such as a particle of dust or a molecule of pollution. Rain that falls from clouds but freezes before it reaches the ground is called sleet or ice pellet s.

Even though cartoon pictures of raindrops look like tears, real raindrops are actually spherical. Hail Hail forms in cold storm clouds. It forms when very cold water droplets freeze, or turn solid, as soon as they touch things like dust or dirt. The storm blows the hailstone s into the upper part of the cloud. More frozen water droplets are added to the hailstone before it falls.

Unlike sleet, which is liquid when it forms and freezes as it falls to Earth, hail falls as a stone of solid ice.

Hailstones are usually the size of small rocks, but they can get as large as 15 centimeters 6 inches across and weigh more than a pound. Snow Snow is precipitation that falls in the form of ice crystal s. Hail is also ice, but hailstones are just collections of frozen water droplets.