Gentle rain is better than a downpour

Rain, rain and more rain. If I didn't know better I would swear it was April instead of October. I know all this water is good for the plants but a sunny day sure would be welcome.

I am glad that most of the rain lately has been gentle and not a downpour. When we went to Texas last month to visit our daughter and her family we were caught in several downpours. We would be driving along under sunny skies then all of a sudden those skies would open up and it was like trying to drive underwater. Five minutes later it was dry and sunny again.

This is nothing compared to what happened on June 22, 1947 in Holt, Missouri. Twelve inches of rain fell in just 42 minutes. That is about 25 percent of the normal annual rainfall for Holt, and it happened in less than an hour. I wonder what the rest of their summer was like.

In contrast, no rain at all fell on Calama, Chile for 400 years until February 10, 1972 when the skies opened up during the mid-afternoon. Catastrophic floods and mudslides swept through that region. Talk about going from one extreme to the other ... wow.

Rain is also known or suspected on other worlds. NASA blasted the surface of the moon with two spacecraft this past Friday in a dramatic quest to find water on the lunar surface. It will take several days for analysts to evaluate the data and several weeks to determine whether and how much hydrogen-bearing compounds were found. Even if they find water I will be surprised if they find enough to make a decent puddle.

Rain is not always formed of water. On Titan, Saturn's largest moon, infrequent methane rain is thought to carve the moon's numerous surface channels. On Venus, sulfuric acid virga (virga is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground) evaporates 25 km from the surface. There is likely to be rain of various compositions in the upper atmospheres of the gas giants, as well as precipitation of liquid neon and helium in the deep atmospheres. Personally, I wouldn't want to experience a rain storm on any other planet but our own.

Did you know that raindrops are not always shaped like teardrops? Small raindrops are almost round. Bigger ones have flattened bottoms. Giant raindrops are supposedly shaped like parachutes. The shape of raindrops was studied by Philipp Lenard in 1898. He found that small raindrops (less than about 2 mm diameter) are approximately spherical. As they get larger (to about 5 mm diameter) they become more doughnut shaped. On average, raindrops are 1 to 2 mm in diameter. The biggest raindrops on Earth were recorded over Brazil and the Marshall Islands in 2004 - some of them were as large as 10 mm. The large size is explained by condensation on large smoke particles or by collisions between drops in small regions with a particularly high content of liquid water. I wonder how a raindrop is measured. It's not like you can stop one in mid-air.

The rain we have been getting lately is perfect for a day of reading. There is little worrisome wind and we are not in an area prone to flooding. Unfortunately most people have to work for a living and we are forced to get wet on the way to the car. Then there are people whose workplace is the great outdoors; most of them don't appreciate the rain at all.

Plus, dreary, rainy days seem to drown any sense of cheerfulness there may be. People seem as glum as the skies are dark. There is a pervasive wet-dog smell in the air instead of the cleansing smell of ozone in the air.

The rain won't last forever. Soon it will be cold enough to turn to sleet and snow. Yuck. I think I'll grab a book and enjoy these rainy days while I can.[[In-content Ad]]