Oil Rain In Gulf: BP Spill Update

June 23, 2010 05:15 PM EDT (Updated: June 24, 2010 04:20 PM EDT)

http://moms.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978323181

The news from the gulf only gets sadder and more infuriating. It's now raining oil. An amateur video has surfaced on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un8co1d4zb4 documenting a recent occurrence of the phenomenon.

In the video, the camera operators walk up and down the street during a light rain storm. The cloudy, foamy, rainbow effect of oil on a wet surface is clear as a narrator confirms the visuals. The video lasts approximately one minute and is filmed across both sides of about half a residential block. Evidence of oil in the water appears everywhere in the video.

Strictly speaking, oil does not evaporate into the sky, which would be required before it could then be rained back down to earth. However, as reported by The Huffington Post, the dispersant used by British Petroleum in its attempt to corral the oil spill seems to have aided oil-seawater emulsification, a key to the process of oil becoming part of rain.

Thus, not chocolate rain, but a far more disturbing oil rain in the Louisiana.