How many types of Rainfall are there?

Including some weird types you want to know. These first three types are classified by the weather defination, but people are more interesting on other funny rain, such as rain cats, rain tomato, etc.

Rain plays various important roles in the earth. Rain is one of the most important factors in the field of agricultural. A certain amount of rain is necessary for the agriculture. It helps the plants to grow and produce food. If it rains really little in a year, the agriculture is affected very much. If it doesn't rain enough, the atmosphere will become dry. The trees will die and the animals including the human beings will suffer a great deal. Rain brings moisture in the atmosphere.

Orographic Rain or Relief Rain

Canada’s west coast. Rain which mountains standing in the path of moisture-laden air cause; the air is forced to rise and is therefore cooled. If enough water vapour is present it is deposited on the windward side of the mountains.

Convective rain or Convection Rain

Convectional rain is caused by convection where the surface layer of the atmosphere is heated causing the moisture laden air to rise. As it rises it cools to form clouds. The unequal heating of the earth’s surface causes convection. The resulting condition is that more widespread areas of colder air separate rising currents of warm air. The colder air slowly sinks to take the place of rising warm air.

Frontal or Cyclonic Rain

This rain is caused by depressions or Lows. Cyclonic rain originates where warm tropical air meets cold polar air. The warm air overrides the cold air.

When contrasting air masses make contact, an abrupt zone or boundary is formed. This boundary is called a FRONT and is accompanied by rather abrupt changes in temperature, pressure and humidity.

When a mass of warm air moves into a region of cold air, the warm air overrides the cold air mass, forcing the cold air to retreat. This situation is called a WARM FRONT, which are characterized by several days of rain.

A cold air mass moving into a warm air mass produces a frontal surface, which is more vertical than that of a warm front. This situation produces a COLD FRONT. Cold air masses advance rapidly and force the warm air mass upward where it becomes cooled. The movement of the air mass is rapid enough to produce cumulonimbus clouds. Rainfall is heavy but brief in duration.

Acid Rain

Acid rain is a serious problem that creates disastrous effects. Each day this serious problem increases. Many people believe that this issue is too small to deal with right now -- they're wrong. This issue should be met head on, and solved before it is too late. In the following paragraphs I will be discussing the impact acid rain has on the wildlife and how our atmosphere is being destroyed.

Acid rain is a cancer -- eating into the face of Eastern Canada and the North Eastern United States. In Canada, the main sulfuric acid sources are non-ferrous smelters and power generation. On both sides of the border, cars and trucks are the main sources for nitric acid (about 40% of the total), while power generating plants and industrial commercial and residential fuel combustion contribute most of the rest. In the atmosphere, the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can be transformed into sulfuric acid and nitric acid, and air currents can send them thousands of kilometers from the source. When the acids fall to the earth, no matter what form they take, it will have a large impact on the growth and the preservation of certain wildlife.

Areas in Ontario, mainly southern regions that are near the Great Lakes, which have such substances such as limestone or other known antacids can neutralize acids entering the body of water thereby protecting it. However, large areas of Ontario that are near the Pre-Cambrian Shield, with quartzite or granite based geology and little top soil, do not have enough buffering capacity to neutralize even small amounts of acid falling on the soil and the lakes. Therefore, over time, the basic environment shifts from an alkaline to an acidic one. One serious effect is that fish cannot live in acidic conditions. This is why many lakes in the Muskoka, Haliburton, Algonquin, Parry Sound and Manitoulin districts could lose their fisheries if sulfur emissions are not reduced substantially.

The average mean of pH rainfall in Ontario's Muskoka-Haliburton lake country ranges between 3.95 and 4.38, which is about 40 times more acidic than normal rainfall. Storms in Pennsylvania have an average rainfall pH at 2.8, which almost have the same rating for vinegar. Already 140 Ontario lakes are completely dead or dying. An additional 48,000 are sensitive and vulnerable to acid rain due to the surrounding concentrated acidic soils.

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Fish Rain

A powerful whirlwind might explain a rain of small fish, but it cannot account for the ones that fell on a village in India. As many as 10 people reported picking up fish that weighed as much as eight pounds that had come crashing down on them.

In February, 1861, folks in many areas of Singapore reported a rain of fish following an earthquake. How could the two possibly correlate?

Golfers dread gathering clouds and a rain that might ruin their game. But imagine the consternation of several duffers in Bournemouth, England, in 1948 who received a shower of herring.

Priests often pray for blessings from above... but fish? In 1966, Father Leonard Bourne was dashing through a downpour across a courtyard in North Sydney, Australia, when a large fish fell from the sky and landed on his shoulder. The priest nearly caught it as it slid down his chest, but it squirmed away, fell to the flooded ground and swam away.

These things don't always happen in a heavy rain. In 1989, in Ipswich, Australia, Harold and Degen's front lawn was covered with about 800 "sardines" that rained from above during a light shower.

Frogs Rain

In 1873, Scientific American reported that Kansas City, Missouri was blanketed with frogs that dropped from the sky during a storm.
Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with frogs and toads in July, 1901. A news item stated: "When the storm was at its highest... there appeared as if descending directly from the sky a huge green mass. Then followed a peculiar patter, unlike that of rain or hail. When the storm abated the people found, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks, a collection of a most striking variety of frogs... so thick in some places [that] travel was impossible."
The citizens of Naphlion, a city in southern Greece, were surprised one morning in May, 1981, when they awoke to find small green frogs falling from the sky. Weighing just a few ounces each, the frogs landed in trees and plopped into the streets. The Greek Meteorological Institute surmised they were picked up by a strong wind. It must have been a very strong wind. The species of frog was native to North Africa!
In 1995, reports Fortean Times Online, Nellie Straw of Sheffield, England, was driving through Scotland on holiday with her family when they encountered a severe storm. Along with the heavy rain, however, hundreds of frogs suddenly pelted her car.

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Flesh and Blood Rain

In 1890, Popular Science News reported that blood rained down on Messignadi, Calabria in Italy - bird's blood. It was speculated that the birds were somehow torn part by violent winds, although there were no such winds at the time. And no other parts of the bird came down - just blood.
J. Hudson's farm in Los Nietos Township, California endured a rain of flesh and blood for three minutes in 1869. The grisly fall covered several acres.
The American Journal of Science confirmed a shower of blood, fat and muscle tissue that fell on a tobacco farm near Lebanon, Tennessee in August, 1841. Field workers, who actually experienced this weird shower, said they heard a rattling noise and saw "drops of blood, as they supposed...fell from a red cloud which was flying over."

Miscellaneous Rain

In 1881, a thunderstorm in Worcester, England, brought down tons of periwinkles and hermit crabs.

In November, 1996, a town in southern Tasmania was slimed! Several residents woke up on a Sunday morning after a night of violent thunderstorms to find a strange, white-clear jelly-like substance on their property. Apparently, it had rained either fish eggs or baby jellyfish.

A Korean fisherman, trolling off the coast of the Falkland Islands, was knocked unconscious by a single frozen squid that fell from the sky and konked him on the head.