Rain

Weather information pertaining to precipitation

Hi. Welcome to Bootkidz. This page has information about rain. Here is a simple animation showing the three types of rainfall.

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About rain

Rain is liquid precipitation that forms within clouds when tiny droplets of water inside clouds collide to form larger drops of water that eventually become heavy and fall to Earth. There are different types of rain including:

Drizzle - light rain
Normal rain
Freezing rain - rain that freezes when it contacts an object

Rain that forms against mountains (Relief Rain)

When clouds bump into mountains the water droplets in the clouds are forced together to form rain.

Rain that forms when humid warm air rises (Convectional Rain)

Humidity is an important factor in rain formation. Humidity is a measure of how much water vapour there is in the air. "100% relative humidity" means that the air is completely saturated with water vapour. Warm air can contain more water vapour than cold air. If warm air rises and cools the water vapour in the air condenses and forms rain. This type of rain often occurs in tropical climates in the evenings when large amounts of warm air rises and cools rapidly causing large thunderstorms.

Rain that forms when warm air meets cold air (Frontal Rain)

Warm air that is moving along that meets cold air moves up and over the cold air. This causes the air that is rising cool reaching the dew point and causing clouds to form. If enough water vapour condenses in the cloud rain falls.