have you ever seen the rain?

[gusl]

For the first time, I really did see the rain coming down, thanks next to the sky spotlights on English Bay... I lay on a table, with the occasional drop falling in my eye.

It's a fascinating thing, the closest thing I've been to being immersed in a 3D vector field, and a dynamical one at that. The view is never the same.

I noticed one low-entropy pattern, however, namely 2-3 meter gaps in the space ~5m above me where no raindrops (or barely any) would pass through, and it could not have been by coincidence... these gaps lasted much longer than the drops themselves, perhaps as long as a minute. At such times, the spatial distribution of droplets was decidedly lumpy (at least, in the illuminated space).

I took pictures!

I don't know if this pattern reflects the shape of the cloud, or just the dynamics of the droplets themselves. What are the forces determining the spatial distribution of raindrops? I can imagine that wherever the wind splits into two, such gaps will appear... and that rain pattern is mostly a function of wind pattern.

Comments

[letters-in-sand.livejournal.com]

I was watching the snow come down through the stadium lights at the oval at schenley park during one of the snowstorms this winter. It always feels to me like weather is coming from 10 feet above the ground, but no, it's coming from wayyyyy up.

[glapaloopscap.livejournal.com]

That is one of the funny phenomena that makes me feel like the city isn't actually Outside. Another is seeing trees at night, lit from the height of their upper branches - it makes them look like great big houseplants. As if being isolated in little squares of grass on the sidewalk wasn't enough!

[glapaloopscap.livejournal.com]

It's easier to see the rain in Nova Scotia, where it comes down hard in big, fat drops. Looking up at a light grey stratus cloud base from a certain angle seems to work really well. There's no closest thing about it - this IS being immersed in a 3D vector field. Of course we're in multiple 3D vector fields all the time - it's just that we can't usually SEE them.

Try it with snow sometime.

[glapaloopscap.livejournal.com]

2-3 meter gaps in the space ~5m above me where no raindrops (or barely any) would pass through

I'm guessing that's the light-rain equivalent of what we call "coming down in sheets" in heavy rain. I surmise that it reflects a combination of the dynamics of the air the drops are in at that moment, and those of the drops themselves.

I'd love to see the pictures you took!