AbstractFlights have been made within frontal clouds over southern England to investigate the distribution of precipitation in the horizontal and the vertical through the systems. Several examples are presented. It was found that there is a large variability both in time and place on all scales which makes it difficult to produce a general description. In all cases the contribution to the total rain amount from the cloud layers well above the freezing level was small and the majority came from the lowest levels. In one case all the frontal precipitation was produced in the liquid phase. Some surprisingly high values of precipitation rate were found near cloud base and have not yet been explained.