The Lily field is waiting for rain. It is experiencing drought conditions this week. Farmers are watering their tender fruit trees, we're watering our lawns and gardens, what might there be that's of interest today on the rain topic?
I went to Today I Found Out to 'feed my brain'. The first question is about raindrops. A thunderstorm is forecast, so what might I learn?
Harry K asks the question 'Why are raindrops always so small? Would it be possible to have a single raindrop that contains gallons of water?'
That is an interesting question with an even more interesting answer: raindrops are more than water. The vapour in a cloud has to have something to condense around such as dust, smoke, salt, etc. These are called condensation nuclei. Rain is usually 1 - 2 mm in size when it reaches us. There had been a consensus in the past that raindrops wouldn't get bigger than 2.5 mms, but Hawaii recorded 8.8 mm in 1986, and scientists have found 5 mm drops buffeting about in the clouds rather than falling to the earth. The record is 1 cm in the clouds over Brazil - they were the products of large ash particles from burning fires.
Who would have expected there to be such interesting information about the ubiquitous raindrop?
No comments:
Post a Comment