Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics How does rain affect point of impact and accuracy

everyone is talking about rain ,why are you attacking me personely.

Your physics is flawed. Quit arguing with everybody

The bullet transfers energy to the air around it WHETHER OR NOT IT IS RAINING. It's called drag, air resistance, or fluid resistance. Take your pick.

Ever heard of a "sunk cost" in the business world? The energy lost to creating that pressure wave ahead of the bullet, aka air resistance, is a sunk cost. A rain drop that is moved out of the way by the air molecules is moved by work done by the air, not directly by the bullet.

Another analogy to try and help you visualize this: If a jet fighter is approaching a wall (much like a bullet approaching a rain drop), and the jet fires a missile at the wall (like the bullet pushing the air ahead of it toward the rain drop), the jet loses some energy by pushing the missile, but the impact between the missile and the wall does not exert a force on the jet at all. The jet sails right through where the wall used to be (assuming it doesn't get hit by any debris). Likewise, the bullet sails right through the space where the drop used to be after the air wave pushes the drop out of the way, which air has already absorbed some energy from the bullet, drop or no drop.

Miles have you have shot in the rain? Rain has very little to no effect(even at long range) on a bullets path as long as the bullet is properly stabilized.

If the jet is flying through rain, does the rain hit it?

If the physics is wrong demonstrate where. Show me where the energy to move the rain comes from.

Already did.

Don't ask jackass questions without reading the earlier posts.

As I stated earlier until you get to the big drops the net effect s gong to be random and small. Bigger drops more deflection. Tell me hail (even bigger rain drops) won't effect it even more. If I were to take small very frangible bullets and fire them fast in large heavy rain do you want to bet on how many make it to the target?

No, you did not.

Jordan, good way of explaining everything. I'm no physics major, but I did take the class. I am 100% with you that the rain does not affect the bullet in the course that most think of. As stated it is the air (drag) from the bullet that pushes the drop. By the time the drop pushes back the bullet has traveled past the effected point. The force from the rain drop would have to be large enough to overcome the drag force in said time period to effect the bullet. I guess the question is, do we know the forces of each individual component?

Here are some thoughts I'm having leading to a question. If the rains point of impact is perpendicular to the bullets no effect would take place due to the drag, but say the bullets impact is perpendicular to the rain (think of bullet hitting the rain instead of vise versa) we would then see some type of effect to the bullet correct? If hit directly center of the rain drop we would see a velocity change, if hit anywhere else a slight shift to POI?

I'm really just rambling with all of this I feel, but interesting stuff to think about.

Aw GEEZUS!!!!

Lets start at the elementary school level.

What happens when you increase air pressure? Air gets DENSER.

What happens when you increase air pressure radically??? It gets really dense.

Consider water. If you hit the water at 10 MPH no big deal even if you do a belly flop. What happens when you increase the velocity? It continues to increase it's pain production until is disassembles your body.

When the air becomes as dense as it does when it is compressed inside the pressure envelope it becomes essentiially as incompressible as water and is no longer able to move out of the way of objects striking it. This is partly why entrance holes can be larger than bullet diameter.

When the raindrop hits the very dense air it behaves very much like the stick you get whacked upside the head with and it effects the bullet very much as if it had hit the bullet itself.

Does all this mean I really don't need windshield wipers after all??

I'm sure it has an affect on the bullet somehow but I've never really noticed...You'd probably see a noticable difference when shooting extremely long range. I've heard of extremely fast cartridges like the 220 swift bullets not even making it to the target when shooting in the rain. Maybe the guy that told me this was blowing hot air...I shoot in all kinds of weather and I kept this target from an outing in the rain (notice the paper was wet) with my all weather ruger hawkeye 308 win:



It may have affected accuracy a little bit....

Wrong. Where are you getting that information?

The bullet, air wave, and rain drop are 3 separate systems. The bullet transfers energy into the air wave system regardless of the presence of rain, or lack thereof. If a drop is placed in the path of the bullet, some energy is transferred from the air wave to the rain drop. There is no energy transferred from the bullet to the rain drop, or from the rain drop to the bullet. The air molecules act as the intermediate buffer.

If a large enough rain drop gets hit dead center by the bullet, where there is not enough air pressure to move the drop out of the way before the tip of the bullet impacts it, that situation may cause the bullet to deviate from its course. This is seen in 1000 yard competition in the rain, where they'll rarely see a bullet get dropped from the target inexplicably.

Jordan, your theory above cannot be correct and can be invalidated logically. Here is the flip side of your theory(replaced bullet with rain drop to your theory above):

"The bullet, air wave, and rain drop are 3 separate systems. The rain transfers energy into the air wave system regardless of the presence of bullet, or lack thereof. If a bullet is placed in the path of the air, some energy is transferred from the air wave to the bullet drop. There is no energy transferred from the rain drop to the bullet, or from the bullet to the bullet. The air molecules act as the intermediate buffer."


Aic

Physics isn't always a two-way street, and doesn't always play the same in forward and reverse, such as in this case. See the above posts for an explanation of what I'm saying. Formidilosus gave essentially the same explanation as I am.

Fellas, there really is no arguement. This was researched with your tax dollars by the US military. Rain does not affect accuracy. A book by Robert Rinker(?) called "Understanding Ballistics" goes into quite a bit of detail.

It's fun to argue when you know you're right based on passed experimentation and data

Now, how does snow effect your group size?


When your freezing your balls off and can't see....well, I'm not showing my target...

I'd say there is a direct correlation between snow/cold and icy balls syndrome. IBS also seems to go hand-in-hand with "numb 'n' twitchy finger" syndrome, which can certainly degrade accuracy.