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Maybe It's Raining Less Than We Thought

It's conventional wisdom in atmospheric science circles: large raindrops fall faster than smaller drops, because they're bigger and heavier. And no raindrop can fall faster than its "terminal speed"-its speed when the downward force of gravity is exactly the same as the upward air resistance.

Now two physicists from Michigan Technological University and colleagues at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (National University of Mexico) have discovered that it ain't necessarily so.

Some smaller raindrops can fall faster than bigger ones. In fact, they can fall faster than their terminal speed. In other words, they can fall faster than drops that size and weight are supposed to be able to fall.

And that could mean that the weatherman has been overestimating how much it rains.