Precipitation Types

Precipitation Types

In meteorology, rainfall types can include the character or phase of the precipitation which is falling to ground level. There are three distinct ways that rain can occur. These methods include orographic rainfall. Convective precipitation is generally more intense, and of shorter duration, than stratiform precipitation. Precipitation can also fall in two phases, either liquid or solid. Liquid forms of precipitation include rain and drizzle. Rain or drizzle which freezes on contact within a subfreezing air mass gains the preceding word of freezing, becoming known as freezing rain or freezing drizzle. Frozen forms of precipitation include snow, ice needles, sleet, hail, and graupel. Intensity is determined either by rate of fall, or by visibility restriction.

Read more about Precipitation Types:  Phases, Mechanisms, Intensity, See Also

Famous quotes containing the word types:

    As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
    Saul Bellow (b. 1915)