Before a heavy rain, before a thunderstorm, there is a strong gusty wind. Sometimes it can create a lot of problems for people - destruction of buildings and falling trees, plane crashes.
The connection between rain and wind
To understand why the wind blows before the rain, you first need to understand what a natural phenomenon like rain is. Evaporating from the surface of a reservoir or land, water rises up in the form of vapor, then cools and condenses into small droplets, forming a cloud. If this happens not in the sky, but near the surface of the earth, you can observe fog. When the droplets become heavy, a lot of steam collects in the cloud and turns into a cloud to rain down.
Wind is the movement of air from a high to a low pressure area. Since warm air has a less dense concentration of molecules and is lighter, it rises upward (thanks to this, balloons fly). Cooling down, the air seems to be compressed, it becomes denser and heavier. Because of this, it sinks down and replaces the warm air, forcing it to rise even faster. This movement of warm and cold air is the cause of the wind. In different areas of the planet, the air heats up unevenly. Where it is warmer and less dense, the atmospheric pressure is low. And when the cold air, which has a higher pressure, displaces the warm air, the wind blows.
Strong wind reasons
Strong winds before rain are caused by a number of factors. First, the wind itself brings rain, since heavy rainfall occurs at the border of the atmospheric front, which carries clouds. Secondly, the descending air flow spreads over the surface of the earth, and this happens due to falling rain drops, which carry away air particles with them.
Heavy rainfall arises from large thunderstorm cumulus clouds when air masses are carried away following heavy rainfall. This air, meeting with the surface of the earth, moves at high speed along the course of a thunderstorm center (thundercloud). This is how a zone of powerful horizontal flow arises - a gust front. The more powerful the thunderstorm, the higher the degree of impetuosity. This is the secret of the squall before the thunderstorm.
An example of the described phenomenon is the remarkable Jet d'eau fountain in Geneva, which has a height of more than one hundred meters. Approaching its foot in the place where the water falls, you can feel strong gusts of wind, regardless of the weather that day.
