What is the difference between “rain” and showers” and “snow” and “snow showers” in a forecast?
Forecasters use the term “showers” to indicate that rain or snow will fall at different intensities over brief periods of times. The words “rain” or “snow” by themselves in a forecast tell you that the rain or snow should be falling steadily over a wide area. Showers come from “convective” clouds, which are clouds with rising and sinking air in the same cloud. Such clouds are relatively small – maybe 10 miles across – compared with the large, flat clouds that can cover all of the sky that you can see from the ground. This means that on a day with showers, rain or snow can be falling on one place with places a mile or two away can be dry. Showers can be heavy or light. That is, a rain shower can drop a few inches of rain in a hour and a show shower can drop a few inches of snow while places around the showers stay dry.
