Rain of the Less Desirable Kind

We all need the rain, but we don’t always like some forms of it: mist, drizzle, and fog. What’s the difference in these three nasty phenomena? The difference comes down to the teeny tiny size of the water droplets and a little bit of atmospheric interference.

First, let’s start with drizzle as it has the largest droplet size at a minuscule 200ths of an inch in diameter. Drizzle sits right in between mist and rain as too heavy to be mist, but not large enough to condense into full size rain drops. Yes it does fall from the clouds like rain but just not big enough to create rain.

Now we have mist which has microscopic little water droplets suspended in the air, but is not fog. Mist is still treated as a stop gap between a drizzle and fog, where the mist is not thick enough to be fog, but not precipitating like a drizzle and that’s the best answer I can get you as it is a bit wishy washy on the true definition of mist.

Here we have fog, and it might catch you off guard to learn what fog actually is. Fog is a cloud on the ground, an honest to goodness cloud. If you ever wondered what a cloud felt like it’s exactly the same as fog. Fog is created when the conditions at the surface hit 100% humidity and all of the other factors for making a cloud hit up right. It also explains why fog “burns up” when the sun comes up, as it raises the temperature which increases how much water the air can hold and the humidity drops, burning off the fog.

The next semester has already started as it felt the break flew by, if you have any ideas or suggestions for articles you can contact the paper and I will get those messages forwarded to me or you can contact me directly with this email address tomy3290@gmail.com. Any topics are greatly appreciated. Now onto your local weather.

The absolutely beautiful weather we have had over the past few days is sadly going away for a few days as moisture from the gulf comes back Wednesday with highs in the high 70’s and lows in the 50’s, but fret not Friday a small front will blow through and bring us back the sunshine and 60’s for the weekend. There are no astronomical events to report. Thanks and Gig’em!

Borgstedte of La Grange is a meteorology student at A&M.