Rainless Rain
It has a name -- that odd look in the sky when rain falls from dark clouds but never reaches the ground. It's called a virga, a shaft of rain that evaporates in the air.
I thought it was such an unusual sight when we first moved here, and was struck by the idea of rainless rain each time I saw it over our neighborhood. Santa Fe art galleries are full of paintings of the skies above New Mexico and they feature this moody, strange scene a lot.
But now I know it's a common weather occurrence and we see it all the time. I never knew it had a name until now. The root of the word virga is, of course, the same as virgin -- it's rain that never develops, doesn't produce, stays chastely up in the heavens and never touches the earth.
Now you know.
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| from the Santa Fe New Mexican |
I thought it was such an unusual sight when we first moved here, and was struck by the idea of rainless rain each time I saw it over our neighborhood. Santa Fe art galleries are full of paintings of the skies above New Mexico and they feature this moody, strange scene a lot.
 |
| from Wikipedia |
But now I know it's a common weather occurrence and we see it all the time. I never knew it had a name until now. The root of the word virga is, of course, the same as virgin -- it's rain that never develops, doesn't produce, stays chastely up in the heavens and never touches the earth.
Now you know.
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