1. PRECIPITATION
6.2
Chapter 6 Lesson 2

3. Precipitation
….. is any form of water that falls from clouds and reaches the Earth’s surface as rain, snow, sleet or hail
In warm climates, precipitation is almost always in the form of rain.
In colder regions it may fall as snow or ice.

4. RAIN
One of the most common kinds of precipitation that form from water vapor is rain. Drops of water are called rain if they have a diameter of at least 0.5 mm.

5. Rain Gauge An open-ended tube that collects rain.
To measure rainfall more accurately, a rain gauge may have a funnel which collects ten times as much rain as the tube alone would collect without it.
Greater depth is easier to measure.
To get actual depth - divide by 10.

6. On a cold day, raindrops can sometimes fall as liquid water but freeze when they touch a cold surface.
This is called freezing rain.
Freezing Rain

7. SNOW
A snowflake forms when water vapor in a cloud is converted directly into ice crystals.
Snowflakes have an endless number of different shapes and patterns (many with 6 sides or branches).

8. Sleet Sometimes raindrops fall through a layer of air that is below
0° C (the freezing point of water).
As they fall, the raindrops freeze into solid particles of ice.
Ice particles with diameters < 5 mm are called sleet.
Sleet

9. Hail A hailstone is a round pellet of ice larger than (>) 5 mm.
If you cut a hailstone in half you would see layers of ice like layers of an onion.
Hail forms only inside cumulonimbus clouds during thunderstorms.
A hailstone starts as an ice pellet inside a cold region of a cloud. Strong updrafts carry the hailstone up through the cold region many times adding layers.