What is virga? It just happened at the Oregon coast

Story at a look

• Wispy finger-like clouds slowly pushed onshore Saturday night close to Lincoln Metropolis, Oregon.

• This climate phenomenon is called “virga,” or because the Nationwide Climate Service describes it, “a ghostly precipitation that by no means makes it to the bottom.” 

• There are not any actual impacts related to virga aside from visually thrilling clouds and generally colder air underneath the virga.

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (KOIN) – Wispy finger-like clouds slowly pushed onshore Saturday night close to Lincoln Metropolis, Oregon.

This climate phenomenon is called “virga,” or because the Nationwide Climate Service describes it, “a ghostly precipitation that by no means makes it to the bottom.”

A skinny layer of dry air generally finds its approach close to the floor. Rain falls from low-hanging clouds, however because the precipitation falls into that layer of dry air, it evaporates.

Rain or any type of precipitation might be seen from a distance, a sight normally generally known as a “precipitation shaft.” Virga is barely half of the precipitation shaft as a result of the opposite half is misplaced to evaporation.

There are not any actual impacts related to virga aside from visually thrilling clouds and generally colder air underneath the virga. The newly evaporated moisture cools and sinks beneath the cloud, generally dropping the temperature briefly in an remoted space.

In response to Nexstar station KXAN, virga, derived from Latin and that means “department” or “twig,” probably due to the way it seems because it falls from the sky, can look very fairly because it falls and might be much more dramatic at dawn or sundown.