Raindrops splash before they hit the ground

I think that's just an attempt to make it easy for people to relate to. Think how useful a similar system might be in a hospital or lab setting, to say nothing of the more abtruse applications that only a physicist might think of. It might have relevance for things from inkjet printers to the way chemicals are deposited on wafers for chip fabrication.

Remember that the physic are independent of the medium; water is the reference liquid because of its ubuity, but with this information you could equally well predict the behavior of other liquids by just altering the coefficient of viscosity and the density of the surrounding medium. I'll hazard a guess that it plays a role in cloud formation as well on a much slower scale.