Why does it rain when air rises?

Rising Air Condenses When the pressure is low, the air is free to rise into the atmosphere where it cools and condenses. Eventually the water vapor in the clouds condenses and falls as rain.

Which process causes rain?

Precipitation forms in the clouds when water vapor condenses into bigger and bigger droplets of water. When the drops are heavy enough, they fall to the Earth. Most rain actually begins as snow high in the clouds. As the snowflakes fall through warmer air, they become raindrops.

What is it called when clouds make rain?

Clouds that produce rain and snow fall into this category. (“Nimbus” comes from the Latin word for “rain.”) Two examples are the nimbostratus or cumulonimbus clouds. Cumulonimbus clouds are also called thunderheads. Thunderheads produce rain, thunder, and lightning.

What happens when air currents rise inside a cloud?

Clouds exist in the atmosphere because of rising air. As air rises and cools the water in it can “condense out”, forming clouds.

Do all the clouds formed in the sky cause rain?

We know that not all clouds produce rain that strikes the ground. Some may produce rain or snow that evaporates before reaching the ground, and most clouds produce no precipitation at all.

What is rain and how is it formed?

Rain is liquid precipitation: water falling from the sky. Raindrops fall to Earth when clouds become saturated, or filled, with water droplets. Millions of water droplets bump into each other as they gather in a cloud. When a small water droplet bumps into a bigger one, it condenses, or combines, with the larger one.

Do all clouds produce rain?

We know that not all clouds produce rain that strikes the ground. Some may produce rain or snow that evaporates before reaching the ground, and most clouds produce no precipitation at all. When rain falls, we know from measurements that the drops are larger than one millimeter.

Why do some clouds produce rain and others don t?

Clouds produce rain when tiny droplets of liquid water begin to stick together, forming larger and larger drops. When those drops get heavy enough, they fall as rain. If a particular cloud doesn’t have the right conditions, Thin, wispy clouds like these usually don’t produce rain or other types of precipitation.

How does wind affect rainfall?

When winds in the upper troposphere blow away from one another instead (diverge), they form an area of lower pressure up high. That lower pressure sucks air up from below, causing lower pressure at ground level. It’s simple – the air that sinks in a high is dry, and you need moist air to make rain.

What causes wind storms?

Longer-period windstorms have two main causes: (1) large differences in atmospheric pressure across a region and (2) strong jet-stream winds overhead. Horizontal pressure differences may accelerate the surface winds substantially as air travels from a region of higher atmospheric pressure to one of lower.

What causes the clouds to become gray and drop rain down upon us?

The tiny water droplets and ice crystals in clouds are just the right size to scatter all colors of light, compared with the smaller molecules of air that scatter blue light most effectively. As their thickness increases, the bottoms of clouds look darker but still scatter all colors. We perceive this as gray.