Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
A ring of light sometimes visible around the Moon at night is called a lunar halo, and it is caused by moonlight refracting through ice crystals in thin, high cirrus clouds. Folklore says a halo around the Moon means rain is on the way — and there is some truth to this, as cirrus clouds often precede frontal rain.
Tornadoes are rated on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale from EF0 to EF5 based on the damage they cause rather than direct wind measurements. An EF5 tornado, the most powerful category, can completely flatten reinforced concrete structures and hurl large vehicles hundreds of metres.
Seasons occur because Earth is tilted on its axis by about 23.5 degrees as it orbits the Sun. When the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, it gets more direct sunlight and experiences summer; when tilted away, sunlight strikes at a shallower angle and it is winter.
The Khamsin is a hot, dry wind that blows from the Sahara across Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, typically in spring. Its name comes from the Arabic word for 'fifty', referring to the roughly 50 days between late March and mid-May when it is most frequent.
In the Arctic and Antarctic, there are periods called polar night during which the Sun does not rise above the horizon for weeks or months. In Svalbard, Norway, polar night lasts from late October to mid-February — over three months of continuous darkness.
Black ice is a thin, transparent layer of ice that forms on road surfaces, making them extremely slippery. It is dangerous because it is almost invisible — the road beneath shows through, making the surface appear merely wet rather than icy.
When a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud reaches the tropopause — the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere — it cannot rise any further and spreads out sideways into a distinctive anvil shape. This flat top is a reliable sign that a severe thunderstorm is occurring or imminent.
The most widely used system for classifying Earth's climates was developed by German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900. It divides the world into five main climate zones based on temperature and rainfall, from tropical (A) to polar (E).
You can never reach the end of a rainbow because it is an optical illusion — it always appears at the same angle relative to the observer and moves as you move. If you walk towards where a rainbow appears to end, it simply moves further away.
Some tornadoes travel more than 100 miles across the ground without stopping. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 carved a path of destruction across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana covering about 219 miles — the longest tornado track ever recorded.