How can it rain when the sky is blue, no clouds, and the sun is out?

Question

Last night i went to ride my bike and i was getting sprinkled on. I looked up above me and the sky was clear blue. Farther away were a few small thin white clouds, not rain clouds, and the sun was out. It was sooo strange. There was a slight breeze. How could it rain w/ out clouds?

Answer 1

its called a sun shower...  

Answer 2

Just because you do not see the clouds does not mean none are in the relative vicinity.

Strong updrafts in rainshowers and thunderstorms can eject rain out of the top of an anvil cloud.  This rain can literally fall miles from the originating storm.  Hail has been known to fall upwards of 20 miles from the thunderstorm it came from.  Rain can do the same thing.

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Tami, You have hit the nail on the head.  Yes indeed this happens most often with hail and is associated with thunderstorms and severe thunderstorms.  The anvil top that you see on the cumulonimbus clouds is produced by the upper level exhaust exiting the cloud.  Embedded in this is not only hail, but rain as well.  Remember, that if it is hail as leaving the cloud, it may not necessarily be hail when it falls.  If you are UNDER the cloud, it will fall as hail, due to not having sufficient heating to cause melting, however, if it is travelling a distance, this increases the odds of it falling as a liquid.

If you still have your materials from Chanute and.or Keesler, I am sure you will find what you are looking for.

Answer 3

the clouds are so high you cant see them

Answer 4

well this is a  merical :P

Answer 5

Hmmm.....a bit suspicious. My best explanation would be showery activity nearby. I have noticed at times a light sprinkle blown in the breeze from a nearby shower but the sky appears blue above....

An edit: This is in essence what a "sun shower" is. This can happen when something such as buildings and/or trees block your view of the sky, making you unable to see the raincloud.

Another explanation would be water from a recent rainshower being blown off of tree branches by the breeze.....

Then, there could have always been somebody's lawn sprinkler being blown by the breeze.....

Seriously, rainfall does not fall from a clear blue sky. Occasionally you may see ice crystals in a very cold fog in the winter, but not RAIN.

It makes no sense; you apparently missed something that was going on around you.

Hope this helps.

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Thomas H - if you see this, can you elaborate on your answer a bit? I was intrigued by what you stated. I have heard of hail being spewed from the top of a CB due to insanely strong updrafts and upper level winds, but I have not heard of rain doing that. The top of the storm is so cold, and raindrops moving up and down and all around within a storm is what causes hailstones to develop, so it would seem to me that rain making its way into the top of a storm would freeze and become hail itself.

Do you suppose that hail stones dropping that far from a CB top and into warm air could melt and become those notorious "sprinkles" before they reach the surface? I thought of that after reading your answer. So, therefore, the potential answer to her question is that she may have been experiencing melted hailstones that had been spewed from the anvil of a CB?

I may pose this as a weather question of my own because I'd love a meteorological discussion about it. Take care!

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parrothead-

I actually do still have my Keesler AFB materials even though my hubby kind of makes fun of me for it....but see- they can come in handy after all! It's been fun for me on here, busting out old weather terms I hadn't used in a while. Oh, I'll always be a complete weather geek, and I am glad to have a few more of them around me here on this board.

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate. What you wrote is completely logical.

Answer 6

Yes, it is possible to have liquid water droplets falling from a clear blue sky, but by definition, these liquid droplets will likely not be "rain".  Rain is defined as liquid precipitation.  In order for the droplet to fit the definition of "precipitation", it must originate from a cloud and must fall until it reaches the ground surface.  

Here is another example of how you can have water droplets falling from a clear blue sky.  If you live the near base of a tall moutaim and a storm had recently dumped a large amount of snow near the top of the mountain.  A few days later, under a clear blue sky, the wind becomes strong near the mountain top.  The fallen snow is then blown off the mountain top.  This snow then falls and melts.  By the time it reaches the valley floor, it has completely melted into liquid droplets.  This can and has happen before.  It may look like rain and act just like any other rain event.  However, by the official definition of the word "rain", these water droplets are not "rain".  

If you follow the strict definition of "rain" and "precipitation", the other example of the strong updraft lifting the rain water back up through the anvil and then depositing it up to 20 miles away can not be officially be recorded as "rain".  "Rain", by definition of "precipitation",  must fall all the way from the cloud to the ground surface.  

So the answer to your question is...yes it is possible, but most likely the event or the falling liquid droplets can not be called "rain".

Answer 7

yes it is possible i have thhe same experince b4 it usually happened after the storm or have passed the house that may have air conditioning on with dripping water, that happened most of the time in summer