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However, intercepted snow can more easily drift with the wind, out of the watershed. Conifers have a greater interception capacity than hardwoods . Their needles gives them more surface area for droplets to adhere to, and they have foliage in spring and fall , therefore interception also depends on the type of vegetation in a wooded area.
Another set of conditions is during ice storms, when rain falling in air slightly below freezing slowly accumulates as numerous small icicles hanging from twigs, leaves, wires, etc. Thirdly, icicles can form wherever water seeps out of or drips off vertical surfaces such as road cuts or cliffs.
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 ...
Sleet and freezing rain occur by a similar process, but are different forms of precipitation. Both are most common in the winter. Sleet occurs when snowflakes melt into a raindrop in a wedge of ...
The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, Rain and snow mixed ("sleet" in Commonwealth usage), 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.
Lake-effect rain clouds over the Iranian Caspian coast (June 2016) Lake-effect rain, or bay-effect rain, is the liquid equivalent of lake-effect snow, where the rising air results in a transfer of warm air and moisture from a lake into the predominant colder air, resulting in a fast buildup of clouds and rainfall downwind of the lake. [1]
A rain shadow is an area of significantly reduced rainfall behind a mountainous region, on the side facing away from prevailing winds, known as its leeward side. Evaporated moisture from water bodies (such as oceans and large lakes ) is carried by the prevailing onshore breezes towards the drier and hotter inland areas.
Montane rain forests are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. Those with elevations high enough to regularly encounter low-level cloud cover are known as cloud forests. [10] Flooded forests, including freshwater swamp forests and peat swamp forests. [11] Manigua a low, often impenetrable dense forest of tangled tropical shrub and small ...