Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
A storm surge is an abnormal rise in sea level caused by a hurricane or severe storm pushing water ahead of it onto the coast. Storm surges are responsible for about 90% of all hurricane-related deaths.
A weather vane (or wind vane) is one of the oldest meteorological instruments, with some examples from ancient Greece dating back to 48 BC. The word 'vane' comes from the Old English word 'fana', meaning flag, since early vanes were often just flags or banners.
Snow itself is odourless, but we often associate it with a distinctive cold, clean smell that is actually due to fewer scent molecules in cold air rather than the snow itself. Cold air carries smells much less effectively than warm air.
A single tropical cyclone releases an enormous amount of energy — roughly equivalent to 10,000 nuclear bombs going off per day. Most of this energy is released as heat through the condensation of water vapour in the storm clouds.
The United Kingdom's weather is unusually mild for its latitude thanks to the Gulf Stream, a warm ocean current that flows across the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico. Without it, the UK's climate would be much more like that of Siberia.
A fogbow is like a rainbow but appears white or very faintly coloured, formed when sunlight passes through fog droplets too tiny to separate colours effectively. It is sometimes called a white rainbow and is a rare and striking sight.
Modern weather forecasts rely on some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, which process billions of measurements from satellites, weather stations, ships, and aircraft every day. The Met Office supercomputer can perform more than 14,000 trillion calculations per second.
Oymyakon in Siberia, Russia, is considered the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with temperatures recorded as low as −67.7°C. At such temperatures, eyelashes freeze, car engines must be left running at all times, and mobile phones stop working.
Lake-effect snow occurs when cold Arctic air moves over the relatively warm Great Lakes of North America, picking up moisture and then dumping huge snowfall on the downwind shores. Buffalo, New York, is famous for receiving enormous lake-effect snowstorms every winter.
Heat lightning is simply ordinary lightning from a thunderstorm that is too far away for the thunder to be heard. The term is a common misconception — lightning itself does not actually occur from heat without a storm.