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Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Mixtures of different types of precipitation, including types in different categories, can fall simultaneously. Liquid forms of precipitation include rain and drizzle.
Orographic precipitation occurs when moist air is forced upwards over rising terrain and condenses on the slope, such as a mountain. Precipitation can fall in either liquid or solid phases, is mixed with both, or transition between them at the freezing level. Liquid forms of precipitation include rain and drizzle and dew.
The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor (reaching 100% relative humidity), so that the water condenses and "precipitates" or falls.
Virgae can cause varying weather effects because as rain is changed from liquid to vapor form it removes significant amounts of heat from the air due to water's high heat of vaporization. Precipitation falling into these cooling downdrafts may eventually reach the ground.
Some precipitation falls as snow, hail, or sleet, and can accumulate in ice caps and glaciers, which can store frozen water for thousands of years. Most water falls as rain back into the ocean or onto land, where the water flows over the ground as surface runoff. A portion of this runoff enters rivers, with streamflow moving water towards the ...
Standard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rain gauge. A rain gauge (also known as udometer, pluviometer, ombrometer, and hyetometer) is an instrument used by meteorologists and hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation in a predefined area, over a set period of time. [1]
Accretion is defined as the gradual collection of something over time. [1] In meteorology or atmospheric science it is the process of accumulation of frozen water as precipitation over time as it descends through the atmosphere, in particular when an ice crystal or snowflake hits a supercooled liquid droplet, which then freeze together, increasing the size of the water particle.
Modern radar scans many angles around the site. Reflectivity values at multiple angles above ground level in a storm are proportional to the precipitation rate at those levels. Summing reflectivities in the Vertically Integrated Liquid or VIL, gives the liquid water content in the cloud. Research shows that hail development in the upper levels ...