Guillermo Montero_Martínez, Alexander Kostinski, Raymond Shaw, and Fernando García_García, Do all raindrops fall at terminal speed? Geophysical Research Letters 36, L11818

Scientists have long assumed that larger raindrops fall more quickly than smaller ones. However, by observing millions of drops, the authors find that some intermediate-sized droplets fall at rates of up to an order of magnitude more quickly than expected. They hypothesize that these are fragments of larger droplets that continue to fall at their previous speeds until air resistance slows them. Remote systems for measuring precipitation that infer a droplet's size from its fall speed may thus be overestimating rainfall by as much as 20 percent.

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO  •  MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

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