Weather Topic #3

 Freezing rain

We have all woken up to those days where the “world” is a sheet of ice. This is due to freezing rain. Freezing rain is rain the falls when the temperature is below freezing, and freezes upon contact with the ground, or whatever else it falls on. Why, you may ask, does the rain not fall as snow? This is due to cold air (below freezing) being trapped at the surface, that has a layer of warm air above it, so that the rain does not have time to turn to snow before it hits the ground. This is why freezing rain most commonly occurs when there is cold air in place, and then a warmer system rides into the area, up over the top of the cold air. It rides up over the top because due to the terrain, very cold air can be very hard to scour out at the surface. A place that gets frequent freezing rain is the Colombia river gorge, because very cold winds blow  in at the surface from the east, so when a warmer system comes in from the west, the cold is trapped at the surface. Thanks for reading.

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