Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Lightning does not always travel straight down. Anvil crawler lightning shoots sideways across the sky for dozens of miles, traveling along the underside of a thunderstorm cloud. Bolts from the blue can even strike the ground miles away from the nearest rain, under a seemingly clear sky.
A barometer measures the pressure of the air around us. When air pressure falls, stormy weather is usually on the way; when it rises, fair weather is coming. Meteorologists track pressure changes constantly to make weather forecasts.
Dust devils are spinning columns of hot air that pick up dust and debris from the ground. They form on hot, sunny days when the ground heats up much faster than the air above it, creating a swirling vortex. Unlike tornadoes, dust devils are not connected to clouds.
The water cycle means that the rain falling on you today might have been in the ocean weeks ago, or in a mountain glacier thousands of years ago. Water on Earth is constantly recycled through evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation — none of it is ever created or destroyed.
Thundersnow is a rare and dramatic weather event where thunder and lightning occur during a snowstorm. It requires very unstable air — the same conditions that create thunderstorms — but with temperatures cold enough for snow. The snow muffles the thunder, making it sound like a muffled boom.
Scientists have found that climate change is making many extreme weather events more intense and frequent. Warmer oceans fuel stronger hurricanes, hotter air holds more moisture for heavier rainfall, and higher temperatures extend and worsen heat waves and droughts.
Every cloud droplet needs something tiny to form around, called a condensation nucleus. This can be a speck of dust, pollen, smoke, or even sea salt. Without these tiny particles, water vapor would not condense into clouds easily.
The Northern Lights (aurora borealis) are caused by charged particles from the Sun colliding with gases in Earth's upper atmosphere. While not technically weather, space weather — solar storms — controls when and where the aurora appears, sometimes making it visible as far south as the southern United States.
Acid rain forms when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — released mainly by burning coal and gasoline — mix with water in the atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids. This acidic rain can kill fish in lakes, damage forests, and erode stone buildings and statues.
A wind vane (or weather vane) is a device that shows which direction the wind is blowing from. It points into the wind, so if it points north, the wind is coming from the north. Wind vanes have been used to forecast weather for thousands of years.