Things That Fall From the Sky

Precipitation has a specialized vocabulary all its own. Generally speaking, precipitation includes rain, snow, and hail. But each of these has a range of words to describe them.

Rain

Rain falls from the sky as drops of water. It comes down hard, soft, heavy, and light. Rain has its own specialized vocabulary. It can mist, sprinkle, drizzle, or rain. A light rain is a shower. Heavier rainstorms come in downpours, cloudbursts and torrents. Rain paired with thunder is a thundershower, and is often accompanied by lightning. A rainfall with copious amounts of water is called a deluge and may lead to flash floods. In northern latitudes you may experience freezing rain, precipitation that falls as a liquid but freezes on impact when the ground temperature is below 32°F.

Snow

Because I grew up in California, my experience with snow was limited. In my mind, all snow was the same. It fell in six-sided crystalline structured flakes and turned the world white, I knew that. I didn’t know it came in powder, corn snow, and freezing drizzle, ice pellets, sleet and graupel. I had read about blizzards and white-outs, but was unfamiliar with flurries, dustings, snow squalls, and snow showers. After I moved to Oregon, I discovered snow’s specialized vocabulary defines many varieties and rates of snowfall. That first winter I used a broom to sweep a dusting of snow off the front porch. It was lightweight and powdery. “I can handle this,” I thought. The next year we had a snow so wet and heavy, its weight snapped the branches off trees. Clearing the driveway took hours of backbreaking toil with a snow shovel.  

Hail

Hail is ice that falls from the sky. It’s different from snow in that it begins as rain and is buffeted up into the atmosphere where the droplets freeze. As this process repeats itself, the hailstones get larger and larger. Hailstones are roundish in shape. Larger hailstones are often compared to golf balls, baseballs and softballs. Smaller hailstones might be described as pea-size. Click here for more hail photos.

Expanding your precipitation specific vocabulary will enrich the experience for your readers. Walking a mile in a drizzle paints a very different picture than walking that same mile in a downpour. Likewise, pea-sized hail on a tin roof will have a completely different sound than softball sized hail pelting a cornfield.

In the comments below share your favorite precipitation words.