OK, so here’s a quick and simplified meteorology lesson: Most rain starts off as snowflakes. It might seem odd that even on a warm day, the rain is just melted snow, but more often than not, it’s true.

The process is called the ice crystal process, or more technically the Wegener-Bergeron-Findiesen process. What happens is that even at a cold -15 degrees Celsius inside a cloud, there are liquid droplets and tiny ice crystals. Because of differences in pressure, the molecules move from the liquid to the crystal and the ice crystals grow.

Once large enough, the delicate crystals fall toward the ground and hit other crystals. These shatter into tiny shards of ice in the cloud. These fractured ice pieces quickly restructure into a very rigid formation called a dendrite. We know dendrites by another name, snowflakes.

But keep in mind that as the snowflake falls from the -15 degrees Celsius cloud, it might fall into 70 degrees Farenheit air at the surface and completely melt long before it reaches the ground. Of course, in “warmer” clouds there are other all-liquid methods of forming raindrop or smaller droplets, but more often than not that will only form drizzle or very light rain in that manner.

Just something to think about next time it’s pouring down rain.