1. Essential Question How do Meteorologist Predict Weather?
Weather Patterns
Table of Contents
Precipitation
6.1
Essential Question How do Meteorologist Predict Weather?
What are the Common Types of Precipitation?

2. Clouds
Cloud Types
There are many different types of clouds.

3. Vocabulary 6.2
Precipitation- Any form of water that falls from clouds and reaches Earth’s surface as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
Rain Gauge- An instrument used to measure precipitation

4. What Are the Common Types of Precipitation?
Any form of water that falls from clouds and reaches Earth’s surface is precipitation.
Common types of precipitation include:
rain, sleet, freezing rain, snow, and hail.
Rain
Prevailing winds move air masses (water vapor)
Rain is the most common. (They come in different sizes!!!)
Drops of water are called rain if they are at least 0.5 millimeters in diameter. (L)
Smaller drops of water are called drizzle (M)
Even smaller ones are called mist. (S)

5. Cloud droplets condense to become larger droplets.
Precipitation
Water Droplets
Cloud droplets condense to become larger droplets.

6. Instrument to Measure Rain
Funnel
(10x more than a tube alone)
Measuring Rain
An open-ended can or tube that collects rainfall is called a rain gauge.
measure by:
Dipping ruler into the water
or by reading a scale
To get the actual depth, you divide by ten.
#cm/10

7. Precipitation Rain Gauge
The rain gauge, measuring in centimeters, collects ten times the actual depth of rain that falls.

8. Freezing Precipitation
There are four types of freezing precipitation:
sleet
Snow
freezing rain
Hail
Freezing rain is rain that freezes when it hits a cold surface.
When clouds are colder, water vapor can convert directly into ice crystals, forming snow.

9. Forms of Precipitation
Sleet
When raindrops fall through a layer of air colder than 0°C
they can freeze into ice particles.
Ice particles smaller than 5 millimeters in diameter
Hailstones
Round pellets of ice larger than 5 mm in diameter
Hail
forms only inside cumulonimbus clouds during thunderstorms.
It forms when strong updrafts repeatedly carry ice pellets through cold regions of a cloud, adding another layer of ice each time.

10. Precipitation Freezing Precipitation
What would be the air and ground temperature ranges for each type of precipitation?

11. Resources
Song Types of Precipitation Video

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