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What proportion of the water in a cloud will 'rain out'?

Or, comparing the cloud before and after it has rained, what proportion of the water is left afterwards?

I really have no idea so am just looking for an order of magnitude range, is it 50%, 1% or something tiny like 0.00001%?

Edit: I wanted to leave the specifics to the answerer, but maybe an easier question is the difference in amount of water (any form) above the surface before and after rain.

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  • $\begingroup$ in your question can you clarify what you mean by water ? To me(and most meteorologists) water in clouds can exist in three forms - gas, liquid and ice. If by water you mean only in the liquid state then I have answered your question. If you are asking will the water vapor convert into liquid water and rain ? Well that depends on the atmospheric state. So a clarification will help. $\endgroup$ – gansub Mar 22 at 8:40
  • $\begingroup$ I'm not sure this can be answered. For most clouds, the answer is 0%, because they don't actually generate rain. For those that do produce rain, what would constitute "100%"? Draining all the liquid droplets from the cloud? Leaving the air's relative humidity at 100%, or at the same level as surrounding air, or at zero? $\endgroup$ – jeffB Mar 23 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ @jeffB sure, anything! I do not even know enough to ask the right question, so please feel free to fill in the blanks! gansub had a useful answer but it has disappeared... $\endgroup$ – Evan Benn Mar 24 at 22:35
  • $\begingroup$ @EvanBenn I deleted it. The question as it stands is not answerable. So if you do some research and then reframe it then I may take another look at it. $\endgroup$ – gansub Mar 25 at 10:51
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    $\begingroup$ you need to give a lot more information in the question like temparature-pressure and the speed of condensation-wind speed-turbidity and lots of other information,and the answer to this will be for this spesific situation only. $\endgroup$ – trond hansen Mar 26 at 6:49

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