The process of snow precipitation is called snowfall. Each type of snow forms under specific combinations of atmospheric humidity and temperatures. Snow has a fluffy, white, and soft structure and its formation is in different shapes and ways, namely flat plates, and thin needles. This evaporation leads to cooling just around the snowflake and makes it to reach to the ground as snow. When the temperatures are above freezing, the snowflakes can partially melt but because of relatively warm temperatures, the evaporation of the particles occurs almost immediately. Snow can at times fall when the atmospheric temperatures are above freezing, but it mostly occurs in sub-freezing air. Snow is normally seen together with high, thin, and weak cirrus clouds. It is precipitation in the form of virga or flakes of ice water falling from the clouds. However, snow often melts before it reaches the earth’s surface.
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Snow occurs almost every time there is rain. Rain is the most common component of the water cycle and replenishes most of the freshwater on the earth. 3 inches per hour, and heavy rain above 0.3 inches per hour. Rainfall rates vary from time to time, for example, light rain ranges from rates of 0.01 to 0.1 inches per hour, moderate rain from 0.1 to. When high in the air, the raindrops start falling as ice crystals or snow but melt when as they proceed down the earth through the warmer air. READ: Can You Get Sunburn Through Clouds? (Of Course.) Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but suspensions, because the water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate.” Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and “precipitates.
![frozen raindrops are called frozen raindrops are called](https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/e1270494/800wm/E1270494-Snowflake.jpg)
The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel and hail. “ In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. They are forms of water that fall from the sky’s frozen clouds. For this reason, there are many different types of precipitation namely rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, hail, snow grains, and diamond dust. The ( clouds) crystallized ice may reach the ground as ice pellets or snow or may melt and change into raindrops before reaching the surface of the earth depending on the atmospheric temperatures.
![frozen raindrops are called frozen raindrops are called](https://areweconnected.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/snowflake2-600x400.jpg)
When one falling particle drops from the cloud, it leaves behind a turbulent wake, causing faster and continued drops. The drop to the ground is caused by frictional drag and gravity. Precipitation takes place whenever any or all forms of water particles fall from these high levels of the atmosphere and reach the earth’s surface. They all form from the clouds which are raised about 8 to 16 kilometers (4 to 11 miles) above the ground in the earth’s troposphere. Precipitation is the falling of water from the sky in different forms.