Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Hurricanes are given human names so that meteorologists and the public can more easily track and talk about them. The World Meteorological Organization maintains lists of names that rotate every six years.
Fog is actually a cloud that forms at ground level. It forms when the air near the ground cools enough for water vapor to condense into tiny droplets, just like clouds in the sky.
The hottest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth was 130°F (54.4°C) in Death Valley, California, on August 16, 2020. Death Valley holds multiple world heat records because of its low elevation and the way surrounding mountains trap hot air.
Thunder is the sound made when lightning superheats the air so fast that it expands explosively. You can estimate how far away a storm is by counting the seconds between the lightning flash and the thunder — every five seconds equals about one mile.
Wind chill is a measure of how cold the wind makes the air feel on your skin. Even if the temperature is 20°F, a strong wind can make it feel as cold as -20°F because the moving air carries body heat away faster.
Antarctica is the driest, coldest, and windiest continent on Earth. Most of the interior receives less than 2 inches of precipitation per year, making it technically a polar desert despite holding 70% of the world's fresh water as ice.
Hailstones can grow as large as a softball — about 7 inches in circumference. They form inside powerful thunderstorm clouds when ice pellets are tossed up and down by fierce winds, collecting more layers of ice each time.
A rainbow always appears directly opposite the Sun from your point of view. That is why you can never walk up to a rainbow — as you move, the rainbow moves with you, always staying on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun.
The United States has more tornadoes than any other country on Earth, with about 1,000 tornadoes per year. A region of the central U.S. called Tornado Alley — covering parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska — experiences the most intense and frequent twisters.
A typical fluffy cumulus cloud can weigh more than 1 million pounds. That weight comes from the billions of tiny water droplets suspended inside it — yet the cloud floats because those droplets are spread across an enormous volume of air that is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere.