Abstract
The effect of breakup of melting snowflakes on the resulting size distribution of raindrops was discussed based on the breakup behavior of snowflakes as they melted in warm kerosene. The maximum diameter, cross-sectional area, and mass of 50 snowflakes were measured as well as the size distribution of the water drops resulting from their melting. The total number of resulting water drops correlated best with the original mass of the snowflake. The averaged number of water drops increased linearly with an increase in mass for masses less than 3.0 mg. Although the mass of each snowflake was similar, the size distribution of the resulting water drops varied greatly. On average, the size of the water drops formed from snowflakes with a mass less than 1.0 mg and greater than 2.0 mg showed exponential and Gaussian distributions in their percentage of original snowflake mass, respectively. Taking into account only the breakup of melting snowflakes, we calculated the size distribution of raindrops formed from snowflakes having a Gunn-Marshall distribution. The slope of the calculated size distribution of raindrops agrees well with that of Marshall-Palmer distribution.
