When two hurricanes spinning in the same direction pass close enough to each other, they begin an intense dance around their common center. Virga is commonly seen in the Western U.S., desert climates, and other dry areas. A picture of virga taken at Rio Del Mar Beach in Aptos, CA. Great storms could be raging above your head, but the only trace you’ll see are the thin wisps of virga drifting through the sky. It shows up on radar as a typical rain or snow shower, but there’s no evidence of that at the surface. That cold air may then sink very quickly and dump a dangerously concentrated parcel of air and water/hail in a microburst.īut for the most part, virga is a visual effect. The evaporation process takes a lot of energy out of the surrounding air and causes it to cool. What’s left are feathery streaks extending from the cloud’s base, capturing the path the rain or ice took before becoming water vapor. When the air beneath a cloud is very dry, precipitation falling through it evaporates before reaching Earth’s surface. Virga is ghostly precipitation that never makes it to the ground. Haboobs, Sun Dogs, Virga, Halos! Do you believe these are all words that describe various weather and atmospheric phenomena? Ever wonder about the ghostly precipitation that never makes it to the ground or on a summer night you wake up and the temperature has gone up 20 degrees in minutes or tornadoes over water or long pillars of multicolored light streaking the sky?

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