Science question: What kind of pecipitation would you expect from stratus clouds?

Question

i dunno

Answer 1

Drizzle or mist

Note added later: "Weather" is incorrect. The name of stratus does not change if it produces drizzle. It would change to nimbostratus if it produced rain, but that would require a larger drop size for the precipitation. Drizzle is in fact quite common from stratus clouds here in Southern California in the spring. As Arasan alluded to, this information can be verified in the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology under the definition of "stratus" http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?id=stratus1

"Weather": I'm actually not talking about fog. I'm talking about regular old stratus, which sometimes has discernible drizzle drops that fall from it. Drizzle drops are less than 0.5 mm in diameter. If the drops get bigger than that, we'll call it nimbostratus and the precipitation will be rain. This is not a new thing; I pulled my dusty "Handbook of Meteorology" off the shelf (copyright 1945) and it says "Nimbostratus gives continuous rain...while stratus only gives a drizzle..."

Answer 2

None.

Stratus is one of those clouds that by the way things are defined, it suddenly changes names if it produces precipitation.

Stratus does not even produce mist or drizzle or rain. If it does produce precipitation, then the name changes to nimbostratus by definition.

Some will argue that stratus can and does produce mist or drizzle if it is near the earth's surface but at that point it should be considered fog.

If you go by strict definitions, stratus can not produce precipitation.

EDIT;

As I stated, I knew I would get an argument over this. The problem is that this use to be a catch-22 for observers. I know it doesn't matter now since observations were automated about 15 years ago and cloud types were generally removed from observation forms, but it did make a difference before then when you normally had to report fog with drizzle in the manual observation forms along with the 3 and 6 hourly cloud groups and those were rigidly checked.

Since fog was a surface based cloud, you could not carry it as status. Now days you know one knows since there is no cloud groups remaining on observations except for the supplemental observations that some offices entered separately but don't think those are even archived any more.

So the automated observations or the manually entered observation in lieu of automated observations are not required to carry fog until visibility is equal to or less than 1/2 mile.

On the old observations forms MF-10A and MF-10B to be precise, if you carried stratus with fog it was an error. If you carried drizzle without fog with visibility of less than 7 miles (Has anyone ever seen visibility greater than 6 miles in drizzle?) then it was red lined as an error.

So, the standard practice was to always log any drizzle or mist as coming from surface based stratus which of course is fog. Which would not be red lined by the observation checkers as an error. That way you would not get a red lined which you normally get yelled at since station performance was judged on the number of red line errors on the forms.

So, yep, I am wrong. And I was wrong when it was red lined in the old days as well.

Answer 3

Definition Of Stratus

Answer 4

This is what I saw in a Meteorological Glossary Book.
Stratus:" Generally grey cloud layer with a fairly uniform base,which may give drizzle,ice prisms or snow grains......".

Answer 5

maybe a few sprintzes in warm weather, or maybe a light snow flurry when it is below freezing