Phillip’s Weather Trivia: How far does a raindrop fall in one second?

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - Many rain clouds are around 10 thousand feet up meaning a raindrop has a quite a fall to reach the ground. How far does a raindrop fall each second?

Gravity pulls raindrops to the ground after they have grown large enough to have some weight. They collest water vapor and run into each other to grow large. Once they begin to fall, they reach what is called terminal velocity on the way down. Take a guess at how far a raindrop falls in one second. The answer is below.

The speed of a falling raindrop reaches 9.8 meters per second which is 32 feet per second. They can’t go faster unless they are pushed by a downdraft of wind. In thunderstorms, they can move up and down at varying speeds within the storm cloud, but once they are set to fall, they usually fall at around 30 feet per second.

At this speed, it takes a raindrop about 5 minutes to fall from a cloud 10,000 feet up to the ground. - Phillip Williams

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