Why Do Forests Often Have "Night Rain"?

In a forest you may see a summer evening sky dotted with bright stars, but at midnight you may hear the sound of rain drops hitting leaves. Sometimes this continues until the next day when the sun rises. This phenomenon is called "i-tight rain"; in fad the "rain" does not drop from the sky, but from the tops of trees. A tree, to some extent, is something like a water pump, fetching water from earth day and night and evaporating it from its leaves at the top. As a result, it is moist in the forest. At midnight the temperature falls and the mois ture condenses into water drops on the branch- es and leaves. The drops will grow more and become bigger and bigger. Finally, they drop down when they can not hold onto the branches and leaves any longer.As the drops are falling so thickly and continuously it seems as if it were raining.When the sun rises next morning,and the temperature gradually

in-creases,the water drops evaporate into the air again and the “night rain”stops.