Precipitation takes a variety of forms, including rain, drizzle, freezing rain, snow, hail, and ice pellets, or sleet. Snowflakes are either single ice crystals or clusters of ice crystals. Hailstones are balls of ice which consist of clusters of raindrops that have collided and frozen together. Large hailstones only occur in violent thunderstorms, in which strong updrafts keep the hailstones suspended in the atmosphere long enough to grow large.
- a variety of [ə - vəˈraiəti - əv] adj. 多种多样的
- drizzle [ˈdrizl] n. 细雨
- freezing rain [ˈfri:ziŋ - rein] n.冻雨
- hail [heil] n. 冰雹
- ice pellet [ais - ˈpelit] n. 结冰的小球
- sleet [sli:t] n. 雨夹雪，雨淞
- snowflake [ˈsnəufleik] n.雪花
- cluster [ˈklʌstə] n. 串
- hailstone [ˈheilstəun] n.(一粒)冰雹
- collide [kəˈlaid] v. 碰撞
- violent [ˈvaiələnt] adj. 猛烈的
- updraft [ˈʌpdrɑ:ft] n.上升气流
- suspend [səˈspend] v. 悬浮(大气、液体中)
