Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Mesoscale convective systems are clusters of thunderstorms that organise into a single massive weather system, sometimes covering an area the size of a small country and lasting for over 12 hours.
The dew you see on grass in the morning is not rain. It forms when the ground cools overnight and water vapour in the air condenses into tiny droplets.
On Venus, the rain is made of sulphuric acid, but it evaporates before it ever reaches the ground because the planet is so hot.
Earth's average surface temperature has risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s, with most of the warming occurring in the past 50 years.
To see a rainbow, the Sun must be behind you and the rain must be in front of you. The light bends and bounces inside the raindrops to make the colours.
Hailstones form inside thunderstorms when raindrops are carried upward by strong winds and freeze. They can bounce up and down many times, adding layers of ice before falling.
In a phenomenon called sudden stratospheric warming, temperatures in the stratosphere can rise by up to 50 degrees Celsius in a few days, often causing cold snaps at the surface below.
Wind chill is how cold the air feels on your skin when the wind blows. Strong wind makes the temperature feel much colder than it really is.
An upside-down rainbow, properly called a circumzenithal arc, forms when sunlight passes through ice crystals high in the atmosphere. The colours appear in reverse order from a normal rainbow.
Dust devils are small spinning columns of air that pick up dust from the ground. They happen on Earth and on Mars!