Here’s a fun weather fact for you!
If just 1 inch of rain fell over an area of 5,000 acres, the amount of water would be
enough to fill almost 3-and-a-half million 40-gallon bathtubs!
Imagine all the bubble baths!
But wait -- the geek in me is now asking: what would happen if all this rainwater gathered
in one gigantic raindrop and fell to the earth?
Well grab your floatation device, because here we go!
So, it's a stifling day in the middle of July, and you're staying outside, trying to catch
a breath of fresh air.
Suddenly, you spot a dark, ominous-looking cloud growing on the horizon.
"Finally," you think.
"I wouldn’t mind a cool shower!"
But then, as the cloud is coming closer, you notice that it has a bizarre shape and doesn’t
look like a regular cloud.
For one, it's too big for your liking.
And secondly, it's narrower at the bottom and spreads wider at the top.
Suddenly, the whole sky turns so dark, it looks like twilight.
A wind picks up.
At first, it's just gently ruffling your hair.
But soon, you have to cover your eyes to protect them from dust, sand, and other debris.
The wind is gaining force, and now you have trouble standing straight.
You don't know it yet, but somewhere up there, in the clouds, an imminent danger hides, ready
to strike.
All the rainstorm water has already gathered into one monstrous drop weighing hundreds
of millions of tons.
This drop, which is almost a mile across, appears several miles above the ground where
rain usually condenses.
For the next few minutes, you notice nothing strange: just that dark and threatening cloud
drawing closer.
But just as you finally decide to hide inside the nearest building, the drop starts falling.
In shocked silence, you see the bottom of the cloud bulging downward.
It's widening... and widening... and in a few seconds, the bottom side of the gigantic
raindrop dips out of the cloud.
You're terrified.
Not only have you never seen anything like that, but you also realize you don't have
time to find shelter.
The raindrop is rushing toward the ground at 200 miles per hour.
Its outer layer gets whipped up into spray and turns into foam after mixing with the
air.
If the ground wasn't relatively close, the wind would eventually disperse even such a
huge drop into millions of raindrops.
Unfortunately, there’s no time for that.
In just 10 seconds after the drop comes into view, its bottom edge hits the ground.
At the moment of impact, the water is already moving at 450 miles per hour.
Mere seconds before the monstrosity touches the ground, the grass right under the middle
of the drop catches fire.
This happens because the air can't rush from under the falling drop fast enough, and the
compression heats it, not only incredibly fast, but also to an extreme temperature.
But the fire doesn't last long because almost immediately, tons of cold water extinguishes
it.
And what would happen to you if you stood right under the center of the falling drop?
Well, assuming that the drop was symmetrical, the water would just fall around your body
and wouldn't sweep you away.
You’d probably have to raise your hands above your head to streamline your body and
take a deep breath since, after that, you'd have to hold your breath for a long time.
But to confess, it would be nothing but a miracle if you survived being hit by a huge
mass of water moving at more than half the speed of sound.
But if somehow you did, you’d feel pressure similar to that at a depth of 1 mile (remember
about the diameter of our raindrop?).
Such pressure equals 155 atmospheres, and it's 155 times more than what you feel on
land at sea level.
And since experiments have shown that the maximum pressure a person can withstand is
71 atmospheres, you can probably imagine the results of getting in the way of our massive
drop of water.
Yeah, your new nickname would be “Pancake”.
But what if you stood a bit to the side, instead of directly under the center of the raindrop?
Still, nothing good would come out of it.
A super-fast current of water would hit you and sweep you away in the blink of an eye.
It would be impossible to get out, with water surrounding you from all sides.
But the worst would be the acceleration that would make all your struggle pointless.
The good news is that now, you CAN buy that farm!
But wait!
What if, for some inexplicable, mysterious reason, you’d be floating inside the enormous
raindrop?
Then you’d feel nothing until the very last moment.
Complete darkness would surround you.
If you decided to swim toward the edge of the drop, you’d start to distinguish some
dim daylight.
But that's only if your lungs had enough capacity, and you had enough time to get close to the
side.
You’d realize that you’re approaching the ground when your ears start to pop.
It’d be your body's reaction to the increase in pressure caused by air resistance.
Unfortunately, you wouldn't feel much after that: the shock from the impact would create
immense pressure, comparable to that at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
No chances of survival, I'm afraid.
So go ahead, kick that bucket.
But let's return to our initial scenario where you're standing far away from the raindrop
and watching a real-time horror movie playing in front of your eyes.
The soil simply explodes in the places where the water hits it.
But the bedrock underneath is unyielding.
It forces the water to rush sideways, destroying everything in its path.
If you're far enough, you still have some time left to see the water expand outward,
covering mile by mile of land; sweeping away houses, bridges, and roads, and ripping up
trees.
As the raindrop water moves, it also pulls along topsoil.
In a matter of minutes, all that’s left for miles around is bedrock covered with pools
of mud.
But the rainwater tsunami just wouldn't stop!
It keeps moving outward, wiping away everything within a distance of 20 miles from the face
of the Earth.
Boy I can just see a movie script here: We’ll call it: The DoomsDay Drop!
Catchy huh?
If the drop has fallen in a place surrounded by mountains, their ridges prevent the water
from spreading further.
Instead, massive streams surge to rivers and lakes and fill the valleys.
Hours later, areas hundreds of miles away are suddenly hit by flash flooding.
The inhabitants of these regions are bewildered - they know nothing about the giant raindrop,
and to them, the flood seems to be an inexplicable weather phenomenon.
And indeed, science wouldn't be able to explain this event, should it ever occur.
Luckily, you don't have to worry about something that's never going to happen.
On the other hand, regular rain also turns out to be very exciting!
- For example, the largest raindrops ever recorded fell from the sky in Brazil in 1995
and on the Marshall Islands in 1999.
They measured roughly a third of an inch across!
- Not all rain that departs from the sky reaches the ground!
There’s so-called "phantom rain," when raindrops falling from a cloud evaporate when they're
nearing the Earth's surface.
It forms a "Virga Cloud," which looks like a tail extending from the real cloud.
- It's a common misconception that a raindrop looks like a teardrop, narrower at the top
and wider at the bottom.
In fact, when a raindrop appears up there, in the atmosphere, it has a spherical shape.
Only when it begins to fall, air resistance flattens and curves the bottom of the raindrop.
- Usually, rain starts as snow.
Clouds consist of teeny crystals of ice and freezing cold water.
This water sticks to ice crystals and falls to the ground in the form of ice balls.
But as they draw closer to the Earth's surface, which is warmer (if we don't talk about winters
in North Dakota, of course), ice-drops melt and turn into rain.
- Large drops of rain fall faster than their smaller mates.
The average speed of a raindrop is 14 miles per hour.
Maybe this speed isn't as fast as you might have thought, but it's for the better.
If rain fell to the ground at a higher speed, it could hit you hard enough to cause some
serious inconvenience.
Anyway, large raindrops can accelerate up to 20 miles per hour.
That's why it usually takes such a drop around 2 minutes to reach the ground if it's falling
from 2,500 ft, which is where most rainclouds hang out.
But if a raindrop is smaller, it may need up to 7 minutes to fall to the ground.
If you should ever skydive through a rain cloud, you’ll find it hurts as you zip through
the rain, hitting all the tiny pointy ends of the raindrops from behind.
I can tell you from experience.
Finally, here’s a bonus: Such precipitation is heavily featured in a song from the classic
movie western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.
If you know the title of this song, let me know down in the comments.
[add graphic: “Raindrops Are Falling On My Head”]
Hey that’s cheating!
Alright then, who SANG it?
Ha ha ha.
Alright, if you learned something new today, then give the video a like and share it with
a friend!
And here are some other videos I think you'll enjoy.
Just click to the left or right, and stay on the Bright Side of life!