Cloudburst
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- For alternate uses, see Cloudburst (disambiguation).
A cloudburst is extreme rainfall, sometimes mixed with hail and thunder, which normally lasts no longer than a few minutes but is capable of creating minor flood conditions. Cloudbursts descend from very high clouds, sometimes with tops above 15 kilometers. The monsoon rains during July and August put a lot of water into the Himalayan soil; when there are instances of cloudbursts, the results can be disastrous.
Rapid precipitation from cumulonimbus clouds is possible due to so called Langmuir precipitation process in which large droplets can grow rapidly by coagulating with smaller droplets which fall down slowly.
In the Indian subcontinent, a cloudburst usually occurs when a pregnant monsoon cloud drifts northwards, from the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea across the plains, then onto the Himalaya and bursts, bringing rainfall as high as 75 millimeters per hour. An example was the sudden cloud burst over the Indian city of Mumbai and other regions of western India, which occurred on the 26th of July, 2005. Approximately 950mm of rainfall was recorded in Mumbai over a span of eight to ten hours; the deluge completely paralysed India's largest city and financial centre.
There is similar name for such event in other languages. For example, in Polish the equally vague term is used - "oberwanie chmury".
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