8 interesting facts on rain
Not all rain makes the ground wet, not all rain is made of water.
While many love the rain, many also despise it. Many get a lot of it and it wrecks havoc, but for others rain is the only thing one should be praying for. Regardless of your feelings on rain, no life on this planet would be able to survive without it.
Reader’s Digest provided 10 super-interesting facts on rain:
Below are 8 facts, for the total 10 check out Reader’s Digest’s original article
1. The least rainy place on Earth isn’t the desert.
Although its covered with ice, Antarctica actually only gets 6.5 inches of rain and snowfall a year, making it the very lowest world wide.
2. Rain doesn’t always make the ground wet.
In dry, hot places, rain sometimes evaporates before it hits the ground. Environmentalist Edward Abbey describes the phenomenon as ‘phantom rain’.
“You see curtains of rain dangling in the sky, while the living things wither below for want of water. Torture by tantalising, hope without fulfillment. Then the clouds dissipate into nothingness.”
3. Not all raindrops are made of water.
On Venus and other moons and planets, rain is made of sulfuric acid or methane. Even more odd: On a planet 5,000 light years away, scientists found raindrops made of iron rather than water.
4. There’s a scientifically proven way to get less wet in the rain.
The brains behind the YouTube Channel MinutePhysics’ Henry Reich explained that the faster you get out of the rain (run), the drier you’ll be, regardless of the additional raindrops you run into.
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5. The shape and colour of clouds can help you predict rain.
Generally, if you see a cumulonimbus (tall, puffy cloud that looks flat at the top) cloud, or a nimbostratus cloud (a flat low-level gray cloud), you can be fairly certain that rain is in the 24-hour forecast.
6. There’s a reason that you love the smell of rain.
Water doesn’t actually have a smell, so why do we love the ‘smell’ of rain? As it turns out, the smell is caused by a molecule called geosmin, created by soil-dwelling bacteria. When rain falls, it creates air pockets which contain small amounts of geosmin. The rain traps and then releases these air pockets, dispersing geosmin into the air.
The smell of rain even has a name: Petrichor.
7. Drops aren’t actually ‘drop-shaped’ at all.
The raindrop design isn’t all too correct, as scientists have concluded that rain is not actually shaped like a teardrop. When water molecules condense and bind together in the atmosphere before falling, they form a spherical shape. When falling, they encounter air pressure, flattening the bottom of the drops, so that they end up looking more like a hamburger bun shape.
8. Rain is money.
The Botswana currency, the pula, is directly translated from the word ‘rain’. Thus demonstrates just how rare and precious rain is in this sub-Saharan country.
More great reads: Discover the secrets of rain water , Monitor rainfall with homemade rain gauge .
For the last two super-interesting rain facts, read the original article on Reader’s Digest.
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