Many people dislike the rain because they find it to be a depressing nuisance. However, there are many great reasons to love the rain. One could to curl up in a warm blanket and sleep while it falls. The rain also causes things shimmer and adds a fresh smell to the air. Frogs croak, reeds hum, and leaves rustle in celebration of the rain! Crepuscular rays dance through the rain clouds and rainbows are splashed across the sky.

Rain drops make graceful ripples when they hit puddles and ornament rose petals. Raindrops’ ability to magnify and distort light can make it seem as though they are their own little world.

A shower cools things off on a hot summer days and give one a sense of freedom while walking through them. The rain inspires feelings of wonder and inspires the sharing of umbrellas. Finally, it’s also fun to drink a hot beverage while watching the rain fall.

Part of the beauty of the rain is how it falls. Raindrops make splashes before they hit a surface because cushions of air between the drops and the surfaces cause them to flatten. Then, it turns into a thin disk that bounces, creating a crown shaped splash. Some rain falls softly like a soothing mist where ambiguous shapes and ghosts of memories can be seen. Other kinds of rain pellets rooftops and drops frogs and small fish from the sky as well.

It is a mystery as to how much rain we receive during a storm. The Doppler Radar may be giving us an inaccurate picture of how much rain we get. The Doppler Radar measures how much rainfall there is by bouncing electromagnetic waves off of raindrops over a distance of thousands of square kilometers. It, then, records the speed of the drops and uses this data to determine their size. In collecting this data, it is assumed that raindrops fall at terminal velocity (a constant maximum speed determined by interplay between gravity and drag) and that, therefore, their speed is largely determined by their size. Larger drops were thought to fall faster than smaller drops. However, it has been found that about half of the raindrops out there are “super terminal” and exceed the speed of their terminal velocity. These raindrops are thought to be fragments of larger raindrops that have broken apart as they fall. Each super terminal drop has the same velocity of the larger drop until they slow to their own terminal speed. As a result, this phenomenon may be causing the data gathered by the Doppler Radar to be off by as much as 20%. These drops could actually be falling up to 10 times faster than what was thought possible.

Despite y the inaccuracy of our equipment, rain is amazing. If we look closely enough, it can show our souls how to dance.