Precipitation

Rutvik Sheth
M.Tech (Structures)
D.D.U, Nadiad

Introduction
The term Precipitation denotes all forms of
water that reach the earth from atmosphere.
Usual forms are rainfall, snowfall, hail, frost and
dew.
Magnitude of precipitation varies with time and
space.
It is this variation that is responsible for many
hydrological problems, such as floods and
droughts.
Study of precipitation forms a major portion of
subject of hydrometeorology.

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Conditions for Precipitation

For precipitation to form:
1. the atmosphere must have moisture
2. there must be sufficient nuclei present to aid condensation
3. weather conditions must be good for condensation of water vapour to take
place
4. the products of condensation must reach the earth.
.Under proper weather conditions, the water vapour condenses over nuclei to
form tiny water droplets of sizes less than 0.1mm in diameter.

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Forms of Precipitation

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Rain
Rain is the most common type of precipitation in
ouratmosphere. Rain is when liquid droplets fall
to the surface of the Earth.
There are two different forms of rain, either in the
form of showers and drizzles
Showers are heavy, large drops of rain and
usually only last a period of time.
Drizzles however usually last longer and
are made up of smaller droplets of water.
Rain can either be formed as ice crystals melt or
it can be smaller water droplets.

Snow
Snow is the second most common
precipitation in the North East.
Snow forms when water vapor turns
directly into ice without ever passing
through a liquid state. This happens as
water condenses around an ice crystal.

Hail
Hail is created when moisture and wind are together.
Inside the cumulonimbus clouds ice crystals form, and begin
to fall towards the surface of Earth.
When this starts to happen wind gusts start to pick up the
ice crystals pushing them up high into the clouds.
As they start to fall down again they continue to grow in size.
A wind gust might catch the hail stone again which will push
Shapes
it back up into the cloud.
This whole process gets repeated several times before the
hail stone becomes so big that it is too heavy for the wind to
carry so it must fall towards Earth.

of

hail

particles
1. Spherical
2. Conical
3. Irregular
Diameter range 5 to
125 mm
Specific gravity = 0.8

Fog
There is really no different between
fog and the clouds that are high in the
sky. In simple terms fog is; a cloud
that has formed near the surface of
the Earth.
There are four main types of fog,
radiation fog
advection fog
upslope fog
evaporation fog

Dew
The small drops of water which can be found
on cool surfaces like grass in the morning.
This is the result of atmospheric vapor
condensing on the surface in the colder night
air.
Dew Point is the temperature in which
condensation starts to take place or when dew
is created.

Mist
Mist is a bunch of small droplets of water
which are in the air. This occurs with cold air
when it is above a warm surface, for example
water.
Fog and mist are very similar, the only
difference is their visibility.
If you cannot see 1 kilometer or less you know
you're dealing with fog.
You can see visuals through mist and it is
morehazelooking than a thicker substance.

Diameter
between 0.1
mm/hr

range
and 0.5

Types of Precipitation
1. Convectional Precipitation
2. Frontal Precipitation
3. Orographic Precipitation
4. Cyclonic Precipitation

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Convectional (Thermal)
Precipitation
This type of precipitation is in the form of local whirling thunder storms and is
typical of the tropics.
The air close to the warm earth gets heated and rises due to its low density,
cools adiabatically to form a cauliflower shaped cloud, which finally bursts
into a thunder storm.
When accompanied by destructive winds, they are called tornados.

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Frontal Precipitation
When two air masses due to contrasting temperatures and densities clash with each
other, condensation and precipitation occur at the surface of contact (See Fig).
This surface of contact is called a front or frontal surface.
If a cold air mass drives out a warm air mass it is called a cold front and if a warm air
mass replaces the retreating cold air mass, it is called a warm front.
On the other hand, if the two air masses are drawn simultaneously towards a low
pressure area, the front developed is stationary and is called a stationary front.
Cold front causes intense precipitation on comparatively small areas, while the
precipitation due to warm front is less intense but is spread over a comparatively
larger area.
Cold fronts move faster than warm fronts and usually overtake them, the frontal
surfaces of cold and warm air sliding against each other which is known as occlusion.

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Frontal Precipitation

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Orographic Precipitation
The mechanical lifting of moist air over mountain barriers, causes heavy
precipitation on the windward side (See Fig).
For example, Cherrapunji in the Himalayan range and Agumbe in the western
Ghats of south India get very heavy orographic precipitation of 1250 cm and
900 cm (average annual rainfall), respectively.

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Orographic Precipitation

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Cyclonic Precipitation
This type of precipitation is due to lifting of moist air converging into a low
pressure belt, i.e., due to pressure differences created by the unequal
heating of the earths surface.
Here the winds blow spirally inward counter-clockwise in the northern
hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.
There are two main types of cyclones:
tropical cyclone (also called hurricane or typhoon) of comparatively small
diameter of 300-1500 km causing high wind velocity and heavy
precipitation,
and the extra-tropical cyclone of large diameter up to 3000 km causing
wide spread frontal type precipitation

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Measurement of Rainfall
Rainfall may be measured by a network of rain gauges which may either be
of non-recording or recording type.

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Recording Rain Gauge

This is also called self-recording, automatic or integrating rain gauge.
It has an automatic mechanical arrangement consisting of a clockwork, a drum with
a graph paper fixed around it and a pencil point, which draws the mass curve of
rainfall.
From this mass curve, the depth of rainfall in a given time, the rate or intensity of
rainfall at any instant during a storm, time of onset and cessation of rainfall, can be
determined.
The gauge is installed on a concrete or masonry platform 45 cm square in
observatory enclosure by the side of the ordinary rain gauge at a distance of 2-3 m
from it.
The gauge is so installed that the rim of the funnel is horizontal and at a height of
exactly 75 cm above ground surface.

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Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge

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Weighing Type Rain Gauge

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Float Type Rain Gauge

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Automatic-Radio-Reporting RainGauge
This type of raingauge is used in mountainous areas, which are not easily
accessible to collect the rainfall data manually.
As in the tipping bucket gauge, when the buckets fill and tip, they give
electric pulses equal in number to the mm of rainfall collected which are
coded into messages and impressed on a transmitter during broadcast.
At the receiving station, these coded signals are picked up by UHF receiver.
This type of raingauge was installed at the Koyna hydro-electric project in
June 1966 by IMD, Poona and is working satisfactorily.

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Radars
The application of radars in the study of storm mechanics, i.e. the areal extent,
orientation and movement of rain storms, is of great use.
The radar signals reflected by the rain are helpful in determining the magnitude of
storm precipitation and its areal distribution.
This method is usually used to supplement data obtained from a network of rain
gauges.
The IMD has a well established radar network for the detection of thunder storms
and six cyclone warning radars, on the east cost at Chennai, Kolkata, Paradeep,
Vishakapatnam, Machalipatnam and Karaikal
Location of rain-gaugesRain-gauges must be so located as to avoid exposure to
wind effect or interception by trees or buildings nearby. The best location may be an
open plane ground like an airport

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Mean Areal Depth of

Precipitation
Point rainfallIt is the rainfall at a single station. For small areas less than 50 km2, point
rainfall may be taken as the average depth over the area. In large areas, there will be a
network of rain-gauge stations. As the rainfall over a large area is not uniform, the
average depth of rainfall over the area is determined by one of the following three
methods:
(i) Arithmetic average methodIt is obtained by simply averaging arithmetically the
amounts of rainfall at the individual rain-gauge stations in the area, i.e.,
where Pave = average depth of rainfall over the area
P1 = sum of rainfall amounts at individual rain-gauge stations
n = number of rain-gauge stations in the area

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Mean Areal Depth of

Precipitation
(ii) Thiessen polygon methodThis method attempts to allow for non-uniform
distribution of gauges by providing a weighting factor for each gauge.
The stations are plotted on a base map and are connected by straight lines.
Perpendicular bisectors are drawn to the straight lines, joining adjacent
stations to form polygons, known as Thiessen polygons.
Each polygon area is assumed to be influenced by the raingauge station
inside it, i.e., if P1, P2, P3, .... are the rainfalls at the individual stations, and
A1, A2, A3, .... are the areas of the polygons surrounding these stations,
(influence areas) respectively, the average depth of rainfall for the entire
basin is given by

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Mean Areal Depth of

Precipitation

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Mean Areal Depth of

Precipitation
iii) The isohyetal methodIn this method, the point rainfalls are plotted on a
suitable base map and the lines of equal rainfall (isohyets) are drawn giving
consideration to orographic effects and storm morphology.
The average rainfall between the succesive isohyets taken as the average of
the two isohyetal values are weighted with the area between the isohyets,
added up and divided by the total area which gives the average depth of
rainfall over the entire basin, i.e.,

Where,

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Mean Areal Depth of

Precipitation

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