As water is carried around the world in the form of clouds, some weather patterns will cause the clouds to release their water.
As we discovered looking at the different types of clouds, not all of them produce precipitation, and different types of clouds produce different types of precipitation.
What do we mean by precipitation? Well, the Bureau of Meteorology says that it is “All forms in which water falls on the land surface and open water bodies as rain, sleet, snow, hail, or drizzle.” So essentially, it’s any means by which the water that has condensed into cloud formations begins its return journey to Earth’s surface.
Snow
Snowflakes are tiny ice crystals gathered together that fall during cold weather. Snow will sometimes fall when the air temperatures are still below freezing, only to melt as the temperature increases on the way down. This is why, sometimes, you’ll hear the meteorologists on television saying that snow will fall to a certain altitude - the air above that height will be cold enough for snow, while closer to sea level, the snow will melt back to rain drops.
Hail
Sometimes, instead of forming crystals and snowflakes, the ice in the clouds freezes and creates balls of ice - or hail. Hailstones can form very quickly, and can be even larger than a cricket ball at times.
Did you know? The heaviest hailstone ever recorded weighed over a kilogram.
Sleet
While snow and hail form in the clouds, sometimes raindrops hit colder air as they fall and freeze on the way down. We call this sleet, and it often appears in storms with smaller ice crystals, forming slushy snow when it hits the ground. Sleet is also small balls of ice, but is different to hail because it didn’t form in the clouds.