Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Acid rain forms when pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power stations and factories mix with rainwater to form weak acids. It has damaged forests and made lakes too acidic for fish in parts of Europe and North America.
The Morning Glory cloud is a rare and spectacular type of rolling cloud that can stretch up to 1,000 kilometres long and appears in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. Aboriginal people have known about this cloud for thousands of years and use it to predict weather.
In the UK, the summer solstice around 21 June is the longest day of the year, with up to 17 hours of daylight in some places. The winter solstice around 21 December is the shortest, with fewer than eight hours of daylight in London.
The first weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched by NASA in 1960 and sent back the first television images of clouds from space. Before weather satellites, forecasters had no way to see large weather systems developing over the oceans.
Sea breezes blow from the sea onto land during the day because land heats up faster than water, making air rise over land and pulling cooler sea air in. At night, the effect reverses — land cools faster than the sea, so a land breeze blows out to sea.
Cities are often warmer than the surrounding countryside by up to 5°C — a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. Buildings, roads, and cars absorb heat during the day and release it at night, keeping cities warmer.
Spider webs covered in morning dew are one of the most beautiful natural demonstrations of surface tension. Each tiny droplet is held in a near-perfect sphere because water molecules are strongly attracted to one another.
Ice fog forms in extremely cold conditions, typically below −30°C, when tiny ice crystals suspend in the air instead of water droplets. It is common in Arctic and Antarctic regions and can create beautiful, sparkling effects when sunlight catches the crystals.
A double rainbow occurs when light is reflected twice inside raindrops instead of once. In a double rainbow, the colours in the outer (secondary) rainbow are reversed — with violet on the outside and red on the inside — and it is always dimmer than the primary bow.
Snow crystals grow into different shapes depending on temperature and humidity. At around −2°C, they form thin plates; at −5°C, they grow into hollow columns; and at −15°C, they develop into the classic branching star shapes most people recognise as snowflakes.