Rain is an atmospheric precipitation that falls out of the clouds floating in our skies. Clouds can have a wide variety of shapes, they look like huge pieces of cotton wool or giant waves, then resemble the feathers of birds. Sometimes the sky is covered with a huge black cloud or a solid gray veil.
How clouds form
Clouds form in the sky and consist of droplets of water and ice crystals. How do droplets of water and ice crystals fall into the clouds? Heating the surface of the earth, the sun's rays evaporate a large amount of moisture, which in the form of water vapor rises into the air.
Water vapor also rises from the surface of reservoirs: rivers, seas, lakes. All plants of the Earth from the smallest blade of grass to a huge tree evaporate water, and animals and humans breathe out water vapor.
The higher the temperature and humidity of the air, the more water vapor forms, which condense and turn into the smallest droplets of water. Here from these small droplets of water, as well as from ice crystals, if cold air, clouds form.
Not every cloud is raining. To make the rain go out of the cloud, the water droplets should become larger. In the clouds, the droplet sizes gradually increase - small droplets of water vapor and droplets become larger, as droplets move in the cloud in all directions, collide with each other, merge and increase.
If the cloud consists of only water droplets, the process of forming a rain cloud takes place very slowly. Mixed clouds, the upper part of which consists of ice crystals, and the lower one of the water droplets form rain clouds faster, since, falling into the lower layers of the atmosphere, where the temperature is above zero, the ice crystals evaporate and turn into large drops of water. Mixed clouds are spilled on the ground in the form of heavy rains and even downpours. Cumulonimbus, stratus-rain, stratocumulus, layered and high-layered clouds refer to rain clouds.
What are rains
Rain is a drop of water, which is quite small less than 0.5 mm and to larger ones, reaching a size of 6-7 mm. Rains are atmospheric precipitation, falling from spring to autumn. In rare cases, it can rain in the winter. Scientists subdivide precipitation into three types: they are drizzling, hard and heavy rains.
Other people give the rain a variety of definitions - warm and cold, long-awaited and bored, short-lived and protracted.
It often rains with hail, with snow, with a thunderstorm. Rain can be blind or mushroom, and even ice, and even radioactive and acidic, exotic and even stellar.
Drizzling rain, drizzle
When it's drizzling it's impossible to get wet under such rain, but the dampness hanging in the air is felt. A drizzling rain - a rain with small and frequent droplets, it is almost not noticeable, small droplets, hitting the surface of a puddle, do not form circles. Frozen rains worsen visibility, make the day foggy.
Drizzle is very small, not more than 0.5 mm drops, which seem to hang in the air, since they have a very small drop rate, drizzle also falls out in the fog. When drizzle drops are not visible, and the air itself seems wet, wet.
Rainstorm, rain with thunder and hail
Storm clouds are formed when cold air meets warm air masses, also the cause of heavy rains is intense heat, wet soil gets very warm, and moisture that evaporates from the earth's surface forms heavy, overloadedwater clouds. These evaporations were observed by many of us, the moist earth seems to smoke.
The torrential rains start suddenly, and just as suddenly they end. They usually last for long, but can be very strong.
Heavy rains are always torrential, they also occur suddenly, accompanied by a strong wind, thunder and lightning, can crash into a certain section of the city, and do a lot of mischief.
These are tree-stuck and felled trees, overturned billboards, broken wires, demolished roofs, flooded streets and entrances of houses, and other parts of the city were flooded with rain, and not a single drop of rain fell.
Lightning accompanied by lightning rains falling into residential buildings, cause fire, break trees, sometimes lightning hits animals and humans.
Tropical rainstorms last for hours, and a huge mass of water pours out onto the ground. Often torrential rains cause flooding, rivers overflowing with water come out of the banks, streams of water wash away dams and dams, flood settlements, destroy houses, roads, bridges, mudflows come down from the mountains, landslides occur. People are often the victims of floods.
Rains with hail occur only during a hot time, when the air is filled with a lot of moisture. Hailstones are formed in cumulonimbus clouds, and when they reach large sizes and can not be kept in a suspended state, they crash to the ground in the form of hail. Hail has various sizes from small pea to the size of a chicken egg.
A large hail can pierce the roofs of houses, break glass, and even kill animals and people. And the small hail brings great damage to agriculture, destroys crops in the kitchen gardens and crops, damages the gardens.
Blind or mushroom rain
Blind rain or mushroom occurs in the summer, during this rain the sun shines in the sky, and this rain is also called sunny, after a sunny rain a rainbow always appears.
To fall under such rain, and even seeing the rainbow, it is considered a good sign. Similarly, folk signs after the rain begin to grow mushrooms - hence the name - mushroom rain. This is a warm and short rain.
Complicated or protracted rains
Prolonged rain can last from several hours to several days. During long rains the whole sky is covered with clouds, the sun does not peer through the clouds, the day becomes dark, gloomy. Heavy rains, especially autumn, are accompanied by a decrease in air temperature. It's cold rains, tedious, annoying turning all the colors of the surrounding world into dull, gray colors.
Icy rain
Icy rain occurs when the air at the surface of the earth has a lower temperature( from 0 degrees to minus 10 degrees) than in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Drops of rain, getting into the cold air, are covered with ice crust, inside the crust the water remains in a liquid state.
Falling to the ground, such ice balls break and water, emerging, instantly freezes. Getting on the branches of trees, on wires, on surrounding objects, icy rain gives objects and trees a fabulous unusual appearance, each branch is covered with ice crust, and the sidewalks and roads turn into an ice rink.
This natural phenomenon looks beautiful, but it is dangerous, because under the weight of ice wires break, branches break, pedestrians are injured.
Acid and radioactive rains
Acid rain is a rainfall that contains acids and toxic substances that get into the atmosphere from harmful industrial plants and car exhausts. Industrial production pollutes the air with harmful gases that rise up and enter the clouds, connecting with droplets of water - form an acid. And on the ground falls an acid rain, bringing all life on Earth only harm. Acid rain destroys crops, destroys fish in ponds.
Radioactive rains carry an even greater danger - the radiation background increases, which leads to genetic mutations and diseases of internal organs, to oncology and skin lesions. The cause of radioactive rains is the accident at nuclear power plants, at enterprises that use radioactive substances in production and in the testing of nuclear weapons.
Exotic rains
Exotic rains are unusual rains, wonderful, mysterious. Rains, which, together with the water, bring down to the surface of the earth various objects: coins, grain, fruits, and even spiders, fish, jellyfishes and frogs.
Sometimes raindrops are painted in different colors - blue, red. Why are these rains? Often in hot summer days, dusty whirlwinds can be observed above the surface of the earth. Rotating, this air pillar draws in various small debris - pieces of paper, chips, cellophane bags, even plastic bottles and raises it all above the surface of the earth.
More powerful tornadoes are able to lift large, heavy objects into the air, and if such a tornado passes over the surface of water bodies, then it sucks in and sucks up the living creatures living in the water high up in the air. The wind blowing in the upper layers of the atmosphere carries tornadoes and whirlwinds for long distances, and when the strength of the wind weakens, "the gifts of the sky" fall on the ground along with rain and sometimes without rain.
And why are the colored rains? The wind raises the pollen of plants high in the sky, and the pigment contained in the pollen stains the rain in different colors - blue, green, yellow. Also, the vortex can suck the water from the swamp, in which there are in large quantities the smallest microorganisms giving the water a brown, red color, or, passing over the desert, to lift into the air a lot of multicolored dust.
Star and meteorite rain
Star rain is a starfall, or rather, it's a meteoric body that flies into the atmosphere of our Earth and speeds up to tens of kilometers per second, when rubbing against the air they warm up and begin to glow, and then collapse. This phenomenon can be observed at a certain time, at night, it seems that the stars are falling. People often make wishes when they see falling stars.
Meteorite rain or stone is a rain that consists of many meteorites. When a large meteorite is destroyed, both large and small fragments fall to the ground. Large meteorites, striking the surface of the Earth - explode and form meteorite craters. It is believed that on our planet every day, about a thousand small meteorites fall.
Why bubbles form in the rain
Raindrops, falling into puddles, hit water, spill out to the top of the water surface, and the air that gets under the water film forms bubbles. Larger and more noticeable bubbles are formed when heavy rain falls with large drops or a shower.
There is such a popular sign, if large pockets of bubbles form on the puddles, it means that the rain will soon end. The sun will shine brightly and the sky will turn blue-blue.
We listen to the weather forecast every day to find out today's rain, and whether it is worth taking an umbrella with you to hide from rain and not get wet. Many of us like to walk in the rain, fall asleep under the sound of rain, while others, on the contrary, try to hide at home in the first few drops of rain, they do not tolerate the slush and dampness that rains bring.
The first spring rains awaken nature, fill the earth with life-giving moisture, dissolve the dirty remains of snow. On hot summer days, rains refresh the air, wash off the dust from the foliage of trees.
