Rain and Hail liquid and ice precipitation Rain develops when growing cloud droplets become too heavy to remain in the cloud and as a result, fall toward the surface as rain.
Rain can also begin as ice crystals that collect each other to form large snowflakes.
As the falling snow passes through the freezing level into warmer air, the flakes melt and collapse into rain drops. The picture below shows heavy rain falling from a Texas thunderstorm. Olthoff Hail is a large frozen raindrop produced by intense thunderstorms , where snow and rain can coexist in the central updraft. As the snowflakes fall, liquid water freezes onto them forming ice pellets that will continue to grow as more and more droplets are accumulated. Upon reaching the bottom of the cloud, some of the ice pellets are carried by the updraft back up to the top of the storm.