What's the difference between "rain" and "showers" ?

Question

On the weather channel?

Which is heavier?

Answer 1

What determines the kind of rain activity, between rain and rain showers is the stability of the atmosphere and the clouds from which they fall.     Showers come from cumulous clouds, mainly towering cumulous and cumulonimbus clouds.   Rain is more likely to occur from stratocumulous and even stratus and nimbostratus which are more stable.   Stratocumulous is kind of between stratus and cumuliform clouds and is conditionally unstable.      These usually are cumulous clouds that either haven't matured into the bigger clouds or capped off for some reason.

Drizzle happens with stratus type clouds...

Answer 2

This is kind of tricky. Even though "showers" are indeed rain, there's a subtle but important distinction between the two as far as weather forecasts go.

When we call for "Rain" (as in, "Rain at Times", "a rainy day", "Occasional rain") is a more widespread event. Most, if not all, of the area will see rain and it'll last for a while.

"Showers" are more scattered. That usually means that not everyone will be getting wet at the same time. It could be raining in Everett and Gig Harbor, but dry in Seattle and Arlington. Plus, showers tend to be much shorter in duration -- anywhere from a minute to an hour.

Meterologically, rain comes from layer cloud, while showers come from cumiliform cloud. In forecasts though, rain is usually continuous, while showers last for about 20 minutes. Showers are often heavier than rain.

Answer 3

Shower is a solid or liquid precipitation invariably from a convective type of cloud.There will be rapid fluctuation in the intensity and the duration will be short.Hail invariably implies a shower.Shower will be heavier.

Rain is a liquid precipitation in the form of drops and comes from layered clouds and the duration will be more.

Answer 4

Showers mean intermittent rain. It happens often when the air is unstable e.g. when a cold front is passing. It doesn't say anything about how heavy the rain will be.

Answer 5

Rain is frequent and steady, showers fall all at once and then stop and then start again, leaving gaps of time in between when there is no rain.