Abstract
The mechanism of maintenance of cold steady downdrafts in convective clouds is investigated in a numerical experiment using a one-dimensional steady state model of the updraft-downdraft interaction. It is established that usually the downdraft cannot be effectively chilled unless it is fed with small droplets from the updraft by at least two simultaneously acting mechanisms: entrainment of the updraft air and fallout of drizzle-size droplets through the inclined updraft-downdraft interface.