You look up into the sky and see a giant raindrop descending from the clouds above.
You stare in wonder as all of the rain that would fall across the planet condenses
into a single raindrop right above you. As the enormous glob of water gets closer
and closer to the ground, the temperature where you’re standing starts to increase.
You begin to sweat, and in that instant, you know something is terribly wrong. The water
falls at over 300 miles per hour. You will be vaporized under its
weight and pressure, but what will happen to the rest of the world?
First, we need to calculate how much rain falls across the planet each day, which is easier said
than done. The daily rainfall across the planet differs as the weather is different every day.
However, the average is somewhere around 260 billion gallons of water per day. This
is a gigantic number. It would be like taking a little over half of all the water contained in
the Great Lakes or around 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools and forming it into a raindrop.
Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a giant raindrop
falling from the sky is that there will be huge amounts of flooding wherever it lands. However,
this is a rather insignificant problem for anyone and anything near the impact sight. Getting a
little wet should be the last thought on anyone's mind, as things are about to get so much worse.
At a basic level, rain is created when evaporated water from the surface of the Earth cools and
condenses as it rises higher into the atmosphere, where temperatures are lower. When these water
molecules condense, they cluster together, which forms a raindrop. When the drop of water becomes
too heavy, gravity pulls it towards the surface of the Earth, and this process causes rain.
Due to how the climate, chemistry, and physics work, there is no possible way
that all of the rain across the planet could be condensed into a single raindrop. But if this
somehow did happen and a raindrop managed to contain 260 billion gallons of water,
it would be just over 330 cubic miles in size, which is a little under three
times the length of Switzerland from east to west. The raindrop would be
so massive that it would completely block out the sky for anyone standing under it.
The raindrop would weigh around 1 billion tons, so it’s not hard to imagine how much damage it
would do when it impacted the ground below. Rain condenses a couple of miles above the Earth’s
surface, so we will assume that this is where the giant raindrop will form as well. At first,
there would just be clouds. As moisture in the air builds, the clouds become more plentiful
and darker. Then the amount of water in the sky reaches the point where the raindrop can form.
The bottom of the clouds starts to bulge out. If you are looking up into the sky,
it would look like something is pushing on them from the inside. Then the bottom of the raindrop
would appear as if the clouds were giving birth. Everything goes black, and all you
see when you look up into the sky is complete darkness. Even if it’s the middle of the day,
the sunlight would not be able to penetrate that much water and reach the surface of the Earth.
We now have a 300 cubic mile raindrop containing 260 billion gallons of water that weighs 1 billion
tons suspended above the surface of the planet where you’re standing. The raindrop starts to
fall. It accelerates to over 300 miles per hour as it approaches the surface.
The water takes several seconds to reach its maximum speed. If you are standing underneath
the raindrop as it plummets towards the Earth, you will be long dead before the water reaches you.
The wind picks up directly beneath the raindrop. Its massive bulk pushes a huge amount of air out
of the way as it falls. This causes winds to blow outwards at hundreds of miles per
hour. People are swept off their feet; entire forests are knocked over. Anything that is not
bolted down gets swept outwards, flattening the area directly under the giant raindrop.
As the raindrop picks up speed, the bottom begins to foam. The air pressure increases as the water
falls faster and gets closer to the ground. This causes waves to appear on the surface
and flow up toward the top of the raindrop. These ripples only happen for a few seconds;
once the massive sphere of water approaches the ground, something crazy happens.
Right under where the raindrop will impact the Earth, the air can’t move out of the way
quick enough and therefore becomes compressed. This causes an incredible amount of pressure
to build up. This high pressure also causes the temperature between the bottom of the raindrop
and the ground to increase, which superheats the area. Whatever is directly below the
raindrop will be incinerated just moments before the raindrop slams into the ground,
covering everything in water. This would inevitably put out the flames, but there
is something horrifying about the thought of watching a giant raindrop fall towards you while
you burn to death. The water you so desperately need to put out the fire would also crush you,
but that’s beside the point. Either way, you will not survive the impact of the raindrop.
The pressure build-up on the underside of the giant raindrop would be so great that it would
start to flatten the curve of the sphere of water. The water and anything inside of the
raindrop itself would experience as much pressure as at the bottom of the Marianas
trench. Hypothetically, if there was someone inside of the raindrop, or an airplane full
of passengers had the unfortunate luck of flying directly into the raindrop,
peoples’ eardrums would burst due to the change of pressure. Moments later, anyone and anything
inside of the raindrop would be crushed under the insane pressure before impact.
The giant raindrop reaches the surface of the Earth and slams into the bedrock at hundreds of
miles per hour. The sheer weight of the raindrop releases terajoules of energy. It would be the
equivalent of over 100 atomic bombs detonating all at once. Even though
the raindrop is a liquid, it would still create a massive crater at the
impact site that would completely obliterate anything in its radius.
Even as the ground underneath the raindrop is decimated, the solid bedrock of the Earth
doesn't yield completely. The water contained in the raindrop is forced outwards, and the land
surrounding the impact site quickly becomes flooded by a humongous tidal wave. However,
this is not just some ordinary tidal wave sweeping across the planet;
the force of the impact causes the water to spray in all directions at incredible speeds.
The flow of water would be moving at close to supersonic speeds. Anything in the vicinity that
was not consumed by the initial flood of water raining down from the sky would be completely
erased from the face of the earth due to the force of the wave moving across the landscape.
People hundreds of miles away watch in horror as the tidal wave created by the giant raindrop
wipes every living thing, structure, and geologic feature from existence. They feel
a slight breeze as the wave approaches. Then the wind picks up as the water forces the air out
of its way. People are blown off their feet as the initial spray of rainwater splashing
their faces turns into a barrage of water. The tidal wave would hit, and that’d be the end.
The wave from the dispersed raindrop would be hundreds of feet tall. There
would be no escaping the carnage. As the wave loses its momentum and slows down,
it becomes less destructive. However, the flooding will be catastrophic.
Depending on where the raindrop fell, entire countries could now be under miles of water.
The water would eventually flow towards lower elevations, and any hills or mountains that
had initially been flooded would pop up above the waterline. New islands would appear to be
sprouting out of the flooded regions acros. In reality, these were just previously areas
of high elevation. There would be nothing left on top of them as any trees or buildings would have
been completely pummeled by the initial force of the wave. However, the barren rock and mud
that once contained life would eventually recover after several decades of ecological succession.
Several hours after the water from the raindrop dispersed across the landscape,
there is a stillness. If the raindrop landed in the middle of a continent, there would now be a
gigantic lake where land once stood. If it fell on Australia, there is a good chance the entire
landmass would be underwater. On the other hand, if the raindrop fell into the ocean, the initial
effects would be the same, except the tidal wave created would be much larger. The raindrop would
displace a huge amount of ocean water and would send it careening across the planet at hundreds of
miles per hour. The water that was forced outward from the impact would be immediately replaced by
the water in the raindrop, meaning that coastal regions across the world would be flooded. The
water from giant tsunamis would not flow back into the ocean as the rainwater would be in its place.
If the giant raindrop fell into the Atlantic, the eastern regions of the United States,
Canada, Central America, and South America would be flooded. The new coastline would be created,
much farther inland than it had been before the raindrop had fallen. Western Europe,
Great Britain, and the western countries of Africa would be mostly underwater.
If the giant raindrop fell in the Pacific Ocean, East Asia, Australia,
and island nations like the Philipines and Japan would no longer exist. The western
coast of North and South America would also be rewritten, while areas like the Amazon
rainforest and the prairie lands of the United States would now have beachfront property.
If all the rain across the planet fell in a single drop, the destruction would be immense.
260 billion gallons of water weighing 1 billion tons falling at over 300 miles per hour is enough
to incinerate, drown, and demolish anything in its path. There are likely repercussions that
we cannot predict depending on where the raindrop fell. But it is safe to say that if this gigantic
raindrop ever did fall from the sky, it would completely change the geography of our planet.
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