Rainy City

The sound of the rainy city stirs something ancient inside you, like the beginning of a noir novel, you are inspired to grab a bottle of whiskey and a revolver and head to the edge of town to contemplate your eternal battle with the forces of evil. Just when your energy is about to set you free, off on this new journey, someone in the house calls "dinner", and you are reminded of how hungry you are. Maybe some hot food and an old movie will do the trick...for tonight. In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel and hail. It occurs when a local portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapour and the water condenses. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated: cooling the air or adding water vapour to the air. Generally, precipitation will fall to the surface; an exception is Virga which evaporates before reaching the surface. Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Rain drops range in size from oblate, pancake-like shapes for larger drops, to small spheres for smaller drops. Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometres (121,000 cu mi) of water falls as precipitation each year; 398,000 cubic kilometres (95,000 cu mi) of it over the oceans. Given the Earth's surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres (39 in).