Precipitation

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Images & Videos

A vertical rain shaft descends over the sea during a colorful tropical sunset, with silhouetted hills and coastline at Man-of-War Bay, Tobago.

A large window looking at a forested exterior, four hand-drawn blue raindrops, and a hand holding a phone displaying a pie chart showing a 60% chance of partly cloudy skies, and a 40% chance of rain.

How Do Clouds Float?

frozen precipitation

How do snowflakes form?

Learn the role of tiny impurities like salt, dirt, soot, or a grain of clay in the formation of raindrops

What Is Cloud Seeding?

Diagram showing orographic lift, where moist air rises up the green, windward side of a mountain, cools and forms clouds with precipitation, while the opposite, brown lee side remains dry in the rain shadow.

Map of North America color-coded to show average annual precipitation levels, with drier regions in shades of orange and yellow across the western interior and Arctic areas, and wetter regions in shades of green along the Pacific Northwest coast, southeastern United States, Central America, and the Caribbean islands. Major cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, and Panama City are labeled. A legend indicates precipitation amounts ranging from 200 millimeters (8 inches) t

Thematic map of the Guinea Coast region in West Africa showing the distribution of major ethnic groups and average annual rainfall. Coastal and southern areas, including parts of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon, are shaded in green and purple to indicate higher rainfall, while northern and inland regions are shaded in yellow and orange for lower rainfall. Major ethnic groups such as Temne, Mende, Yoruba, Igbo, and Ashanti are labeled within their respective reg

A vertical rain shaft descends over the sea during a colorful tropical sunset, with silhouetted hills and coastline at Man-of-War Bay, Tobago. — rain shaft A rain shaft piercing a tropical sunset as seen from Man-o'-War Bay, Tobago, Caribbean Sea.

Precipitation

weather

Written and fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 10, 2026 •History

Precipitation, all liquid and solid water particles that fall from clouds and reach the ground. These particles include drizzle, rain, snow, snow pellets, ice crystals, and hail. (This article contains a brief treatment of precipitation. For more-extensive coverage, see climate: Precipitation.) The essential difference between a precipitation particle and a cloud particle is one of size. An average raindrop has a mass equivalent to about one million cloud droplets. Because of their large size, precipitation...

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