What exactly is precipitation?

Most people think precipitation just relates to rainfall, but in fact precipitation is any product of condensed water vapor that falls to the ground. This includes rain, drizzle, snow, sleet, graupel and hail.

Precipitation happens when parts of the atmosphere become saturated with water vapor. Once this happens the water vapor condenses and then falls as precipitation which can then be divided into three categories based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact or ice.

Rain and drizzle are types of precipitation that falls as liquid water, however if these types freeze on contact with a surface is it called freezing rain or freezing drizzle. Snow, hail and graupel are types of frozen precipitation.

It is not just the Earth that sees precipitation. On Saturn's largest satellite methane precipitates as a flow-falling drizzle with rain puddles near its equator and its polar regions.