Precipitation A simple definition of precipitation is any form of water that falls from clouds in the sky. Precipitation includes rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, and hail. So with that being said let's take a look at these different forms of precipitation. Rain Rain is the most common form of precipitation. The United States (excluding Hawaii and Alaska), gets an average of 30.21 inches of rainfall each year. The main reason there is so much rain over the other kinds of precipitation, is the fact that for the majority of the year in most countries, the temperature is on the warmer side, therefore the air is not cold enough to convert our rain, into snow, hail, or even sleet. Freezing rain is a variant of rain. The way freezing rain …show more content…
Snow is formed by very cold temperatures in the moist air, the tiny droplets of water in the air freeze into miniature ice crystals that bump into each other to form each individual snowflake. After seeing how snow is made, it's quite obvious why each snowflake is different. Snow can be a wonderful thing for children and even adults when it comes to snow angels, snowmen, skiing, and other winter sports. Yet it can be devastating for people that get a lot of it each year, such as people who live in New Hampshire, California, or Alaska. For these people snow can either be fun or terrible, it depends, For Alaska and New Hampshire, Avalanches are not necessarily rare, in fact Alaska gets 100s of avalanches each year, some mild, some …show more content…
Hail is responsible for the damage of cars, houses, people and most things that are kept outside, now, we have to keep in mind that hail is not always this damaging, but with the right conditions it can destroy many things. The way hail is formed, is in a process sort of like a layer effect, when a thunderstorms winds are strong enough to carry water droplets at a freezing temperature, the updraft will carry these tiny droplets around, as the droplets bump into each other, the updraft can not keep the water unfrozen, therefore it has to freeze. As the frozen balls of ice loft around in the air they continue to bump into each other and add layers, when the balls of ice become too heavy for the updrafts to carry, they fall to the ground as hail. Hail is most dangerous during tornadoes, the powerful winds of the tornado swirls the hail around at dangerous speeds, depending on the size of the hailstone, some can be fatal upon human contact. During mild storms hailstones can easily be formed to size of a golf ball, in severe storms however, some can reach the size of a
Avalanches kill back country recreationalists every year, including skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers, and snowmachiners. All back country users should have knowledge of the basic physics of avalanches to help them evaluate local and regional potential for slides. The foundation of this knowledge comes from understanding how the surrounding environmental conditions in previous weeks, previous days, and the day in question all contribute to snow stability or instability, and how specific factors affect snow on a micro-scale, which determines how snow slopes will behave on a macro-scale. There are two major types of avalanches (excluding debris avalanches from broken cornices and ice formations). These are point releases, or loose snow slides, and slab avalanches. While point releases can be dangerous and should be avoided, slab avalanches are much more catastrophic and account for most of the backcountry avalanche disasters involving humans. Basic physics of point releases are discussed here, followed by a discussion on the basic physics of slab avalanches, and how external factors contribute to the stability or instability of a snow covered slope.
When thunderstorm are mentioned, a large gray mass of clouds with an anvil shape immediately comes to mind, and most people never give it a second thought. Thunderstorms form because of the rapid upward movement of warm, moist air (2010, Thunderstorm). Depending on the severity of the storm there can be anything from several inches of rain to hail, and in some severe cases even tornadoes. Thunderstorms can be classified as a single-cell, multi-cell, or super-cell, with super-cells being the most severe of the three. Because of the large amounts of rain that can accompany a thunderstorm, they are also responsible for secondary disasters like flash flooding.
There Will Come Soft Rains is a short story that takes place after a nuclear war. In this story, it goes through the daily routine of a completely machine run house. The daily routine had been set for the family that lived there prior to the war. But, now the family no longer lives there, so the machines just keep running, with nothing to stop them. By The Waters of Babylon is also a short story that takes place after a nuclear war. The son of a priest goes on a journey to the east, which is forbidden. The place he travels to is called “The Place of The Gods.” He fears that this journey will kill him.
There are numerous stages that take place simultaneously in the hydrologic cycle and this includes evaporation. This is when the water alters from a liquid state into a gas. The damp air from the water rises into the atmosphere and when it cools, the vapor condenses and shapes into clouds. But those billows are not the only form the vapors make; it can also materialize as dew, fog and mist, which blanket the Earth, characteristically on a rainy or humid day. Evaporation takes place when water changes from a liquid state into a gaseous state, and ascents out of the pores of the earth and into the atmosphere as a vapor (“How”). While evaporation is taking place, condensation is also occurring. When the temperature in the air plunges, the clouds become heavy and as a result they relieve themselves of the extra weight, which is called precipitation. This produces rain, hail, snow and sleet, conditioned upon the temperate. As the precipitation falls, it enters the surface of the ground and percolates into the soil, which is called infiltration. The more porous the land is, the more the infiltration can take place. However, the ground cannot hold all of that water and floods. The excess rainfall, which is also called runoff that has not been absorbed makes its way into bodies of water, such as small ponds, rivers, lakes and parts of the ocean (“Summary”).
Climate, weather, and meteorology are 3 words that seem to be the same but in reality differ significantly. Two of these concepts pertain to the atmosphere but differ in what time and place they are studied in, and the last one is studying these concepts.
As the warm air mass rises it condenses into a series of clouds. The warm front brings light rain and also light snow. All this is followed by warmer and milder weather.
Weather Modification (WM) began in the mid 1940s with three scientists at the General Electric Laboratory. Vincent Schaefer, Bernard Vonnegut, and Irving Langmuir conducted various experiments in precipitation management. Their studies showed that the use of dry ice and silver iodide in supercooled stratus clouds acted as “seeds” for rain and snow making. Simply put, seeding is the introduction of crystalline particles into a cloud to create ice crystals and water droplets that will become precipitation (Bridget, 51). These first series of experiments encouraged new rain enhancement and hail prevention projects throughout the world (List, 51).
Water has three stages—liquid, gas and solid. Water on Earth can be liquid as rain, streams, or oceans. It can be a solid like hail, ice or snow. It can be a gas like vapor, steam or clouds. As described by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (2010), the hydrologic cycle is the process of water changing from liquid to gas to solid. The energy of the sun drives the changes to water. When water is heated up, it evaporates, turning into a gas to form steam or vapor. The water vapor rises with warm air that when meets cooler air, condenses to form clouds. These clouds and water vapor can be transported around the world. Precipitation is when water falls to Earth, in warmer temperatures as liquid and in temperatures, as a solid. On Earth, precipitation can evaporate again or infiltrate the Earth to become groundwater. As ground water it can collect in oceans, rivers or on snowy mountaintops and glaciers. It can also be released back into the atmosphere via transpiration, when water evaporates off soil, trees. When water evaporates, the cycle starts again.
Once upon a time high above the earth, fluffy white clouds drifted through the atmosphere. In the clouds lived a family Droplet of water, round and content with life. For as long as I could remember, I spent my days lying on my back, relaxing and soaking up the sun's warm rays. One day, I took my usual place in the sun but the light didn't seem to be as bright. In fact, as the day went on, it grew darker and darker, loud claps of thunder shook the cloud, and the Droplet felt as if he were getting so heavy he could hardly move. This is called precipitation.
Climate change is “any significant change in climate including temperature, precipitation, or wind patterns that occur over an extended period of time.” (Glossary of Climate Change Terms)
This is where frontal precipitation occurs. In the summer the cold, dry continental arctic cool winds originates towards south bringing a respite of heat waves which collides with the maritime arctic air mass which travels over large bodies of water making it moist and mild. When these two air masses collide, the formation of frontal precipitation occurs and causes rain. In the Maritimes, most precipitation is caused when cold dry air from the north meets warm, moist air from the south.
Avalanches are large amounts of snow, ice, and rocks rapidly moving down a mountainside. They can have many causes, some are natural and others are artificial. Some examples of natural avalanche causes include new rain or snow; these can in fact cause a cluster of snow to suddenly dislodge and downpour on a mountainside. Earthquakes and the natural movement of animals are also known to have caused avalanches in the past. The movement of the animals or earthquakes slowly or rapidly moves the snow until it is moved so much that it becomes loose and again runs down a mountainside. Artificial triggers consisting of things like snowmobiles, skiers, gunshots, and explosives. Avalanches usually occur during the winter and spring, as they are
Over the past century, the United States has experienced many extreme droughts, all ranging in severity. A drought is defined as the deficiency of precipitation over a period of time which leads to a shortage of water, impacting the community, agriculture, economy, and much more. The intensity of a drought varies depending on the region and its average amount of rainfall. For example, if a region that typically receives rain every day were to go a month without it, they would struggle much more than a region that typically only gets rain four months out of the year. Because of this, there are multiple factors that weigh in on characterizing the drought and its intensity as well as its consequences, both short term and long term, on that specific region. There are several different droughts that have occurred in America that depict the severity of the drought itself and its effects on the region.
A thunderstorm that produces large amounts of precipitation which reaches the ground should have deep moisture stratums in unstable conditions, causing enough convection to be restricted to the electrification level of the atmosphere, or being lifted by orographic or frontal systems (Rorig and Ferguson, 1999). However, some thunderstorms produce small amounts of precipitation or none. Colson (1960) explained this phenomenon as a result of high-level thunderstorms with high cloud bases where the appropriate conditions for triggering lightning flashes accompanied by precipitation are situated in the upper levels. Rorig and Ferguson (1999) analysed the synoptic patterns of dry thunderstorms and concluded that low moisture levels in the inferior part of the atmosphere coupled with high instability, leads to the evaporation of precipitation prior to reaching the ground level, this way reducing the moisture content of the underlying surface.
Precipitation: Clouds in the air drop rain on land in the form of water, hail or snow.