Today, on “Morning’s In The Bay”, 99.9 The Bay…..the subject just happened to come up. Seeing that Thunder Bay is under a “special weather statement” with upwards of 80 mm of rain expected by mid-Thursday.

So, I put it up on the “Google” – and asked the search engine: “What is rain”? Ready for the explanation:

Rain is really just the world’s biggest recycling program.

The water you’re looking at falling from the sky today might have been:

• In Lake Superior last week
• In a cloud over Winnipeg yesterday
• In a dinosaur’s drinking water millions of years ago????

Water evaporates, rises into the atmosphere, cools, forms clouds, and eventually gets too heavy to stay up there. Gravity takes over, and down it comes.

Fun Rain Facts

A typical raindrop falls at about 20 to 30 km/h.

Rain isn’t tear-shaped like we draw it. Small raindrops are actually pretty close to round.

The smell after it rains has a name: Petrichor. It’s caused by oils from plants and compounds released from soil.

Thunder Bay gets roughly 800 mm of rain annually, depending on the year.

Clouds are heavy. A typical fluffy cumulus cloud can hold hundreds of thousands of kilograms of water.

DID YOU KNOW: it rains diamonds on some planets, including Neptune and Uranus. Not a joke. Scientists believe extreme pressure can turn carbon into diamonds that fall through the atmosphere.

So….in the middle of this ‘rain event’ – don’t forget the rain jacket / the poncho / the rain boots and……………UMBRELLA.