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Just appeared on Radio Stoke to discuss this with the always entertaining Stuart. According to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ website

Four in five UK parents have been stumped by a science question posed by their children, a poll has suggested.

I ducked out of helping with the most popular question, "Where do babies come from?" Sorry, you're on your own there. But the others were very interesting included one I hadn't been asked before: "Why don't dogs get sore throats from barking?"

The answer is they do, but because dog language is a good deal simpler than ours, doggy vocal chords are less sophisticated and rather more robust. So they can bark for longer than we can shout. It means yelling at a dog to stop barking is pretty pointless although a dog will get a sore throat in the end.

But the question that stumped me concerned the weather. "Why does it tend to rain during the day and clear up at night?" I'd never heard that before and frankly I can think of reasons why it might be true and why the reverse might be true too. I suspect it's a mixt of both with local geography having an impact. But if you know more let me know.

Update Simon Keeling who is one of our Midlands Today weather presenters and posts here has been in touch.

Well, normal frontal rain occurs both during the day and at night. (You know the stuff that moves in as bands off the Atlantic.) I think what the listener is referring to is convective rain. This is the stuff borne from the fluffy cumulus clouds that bubble up during the day and unleash their energy as showers. The clouds are created by the heat of the day, building and eventually producing the rain. They rely on the atmosphere above the ground being cool relative to the surface as this 'instability' then allows the clouds to build.

So now you know. Rain does clear up at night. Observant listeners at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Stoke.

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