Student Research Pages - What Makes Weather? - Precipitation

What Makes Weather? - Precipitation

We call wet stuff, like rain, precipitation (pre-SIP-uh-tay-shun). That's an official weather word! Any form of water that falls to the earth gets that name – PRECIPITATION Check out these other wet weather words:

	When chunks of ice fall from the sky, we call them "hail." Yikes! Run for cover! See why at this website: education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/hail-ee.
	One single snowflake contains two to 200 ice crystals! Look at these amazing examples of natural geometry at: snowcrystals.com.
	Mix snow and rain together and you get a mushy mess called sleet! Sleet gets made when snow passes through a layer of warm air on its way down.
	Ever notice wet grass even when it didn’t rain? When moisture in the air gets too heavy it settles to the ground as "dew."

See the dew on the blades of grass?

 Measuring Precipitation:

We use a rain gauge to find out how much moisture fell.

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