How can the rain "lift"?
I mean, I can pretty well figure out that the fog or mist or smog, etc. "lifts", i.e. disappears or disperses by or as if by rising, but "the rain lifting" sounds like it's swallowing itself back up into the clouds, sort of in the same way as the rain sequence from a movie that would be playing backward. Or is it a natural meteorological process involving vapor that is described here?
In addition, what other weather events aside from the rain, fog, smog, etc., "lift", that is, go away until none is left?
For example, does a snowfall, thunderstorm, hurricane, or hailstorm "lift"?
lift
- v. intr.
a. To disappear or disperse by or as if by rising: By afternoon the smog had lifted.
b. To stop temporarily: The rain lifted by morning. American Heritage® Dictionary
Best Answer
This meaning of 'lift', the range of meaning that includes "a rain lifting", is part of a much larger montage or (if only we knew enough to see the connectedness of the whole) tapestry of meaning that might be said to explain any one use. The range of meaning that includes rain lifting also includes all atmospheric phenomena that increase visibility as they cease: darkness itself lifts, as does snow, hail, fog, smog, etc. So also are curtains and drapes 'lifted' when in fact they may only be moved aside.
The continued application of 'lift' to describe the cessation of atmospheric phenomena that increase visibility as they decrease testifies to the primacy of appearance as a driver of meaning. So, we say "the rain lifted" for much the same reason the 'solstice' (from "sōl sun ... + participial stem of sistĕre to stand still", OED Online) is called the solstice: on that day, to an observer from the limited perspective of earth, the sun appears to stand still. The rain that 'lifts' does appear to vanish into the gradually revealed sky...and an Old Norse word meaning 'sky' ("Old Norse lopt air, sky = lift n.1" op. cit.) is a source of the first attested uses of 'lift' in English. In those uses the original meaning of 'lift', that is, 'the air, atmosphere, sky', a sense now mostly obsolete, is preserved:
["lift, n.1". OED Online. December 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/108135 (accessed January 03, 2016).]
The foregoing explanation, while complete in itself, discounts the virga effect by relegating it to a secondary role in the continued use of 'lift' to describe the lifting of rain. This is because, while the virga effect applies to rain, it does not apply equally to darkness lifting, or the lifting of hail, sleet, or other atmospheric phenomena. The virga effect does, however, apply uniquely to rain, and may partly explain the continued use of 'lift' to describe the cessation of rain.
Simply, the virga effect, and 'virga' itself, names this phenomenon:
Raindrops, as it happens, start large in the clouds but, due to evaporation, diminish as they fall, and especially so in dry air. The raindrops also disperse as they fall, and so many rain showers appear lighter at the lower levels than the upper levels when viewed from a distance. In very dry air, it is common to be able to see in the distance a rain shower that vanishes altogether before reaching the ground. As such a shower gradually shrinks and ceases, then, the rain appears to lift into the cloud that produced it, disappearing from the bottom up, rather than the top down.