Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
A storm is officially called a blizzard only if it has winds of at least 35 mph, heavy snowfall or blowing snow that reduces visibility to less than a quarter mile, and these conditions must last for at least three hours. Not every snowstorm qualifies!
The saying 'lightning never strikes the same place twice' is completely false. The Empire State Building in New York City is struck by lightning about 20 to 25 times per year. Tall objects are natural lightning attractors and get hit repeatedly.
Clouds are grouped into ten main types based on their shape and how high they form in the sky. The highest clouds, called cirrus, are wispy and made entirely of ice crystals, while the lowest, stratus clouds, form in flat gray sheets close to the ground.
Hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. This is caused by the Coriolis effect — the way Earth's rotation deflects moving air and water to the right in the north and to the left in the south.
The fresh earthy smell you notice when rain falls on dry ground has a name: petrichor. It is caused by a chemical called geosmin released from soil bacteria, mixed with plant oils that were absorbed into the ground during dry weather.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest non-polar desert on Earth. Some weather stations in the Atacama have never recorded rainfall, and parts of the desert may not have seen significant rain for hundreds of years.
Waterspouts are tornadoes that form over water. Unlike land tornadoes, most waterspouts are weaker and form from the water upward in fair weather. They can still be very dangerous to boats and swimmers caught in their path.
Heat waves kill more people than any other type of extreme weather in the United States. The European heat wave of 2003 caused an estimated 70,000 deaths as temperatures soared well above normal for weeks during August.
Syracuse, New York, is one of the snowiest big cities in the United States, averaging more than 123 inches (312 cm) of snow per year. The city sits downwind of Lake Ontario, which pumps moisture into cold arctic air to create heavy lake-effect snowstorms.
The jet stream is a fast-moving river of air high in the atmosphere that can travel at speeds of up to 250 mph. Airplanes traveling east across the Atlantic fly faster by riding the jet stream, saving fuel and cutting travel time by over an hour.