Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
Lake-effect snow occurs when very cold air blows over a large, relatively warm lake and picks up huge amounts of moisture. This moisture quickly freezes and falls as heavy, narrow bands of snow on the downwind shore — sometimes dumping several feet of snow in just a few hours while nearby areas get almost nothing.
An anemometer is the instrument used to measure wind speed. The most common type has three or four cups mounted on arms that spin in the wind — the faster they spin, the stronger the wind. Even the International Space Station has an anemometer!
A fogbow is like a rainbow but appears in fog instead of rain. Because fog droplets are much smaller than raindrops, they scatter light differently, producing a ghostly white or pale bow in the sky with barely any color. Sailors have called them 'white rainbows' for centuries.
Nearly all weather happens in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere extending about 7 to 10 miles above the surface. Above it lies the tropopause, a boundary layer that acts like a lid, preventing most clouds and weather systems from rising any higher.
Smog is a combination of fog and air pollution — the word itself is a blend of 'smoke' and 'fog.' The Great Smog of London in December 1952 was so thick that people could not see their own feet and it is estimated to have caused over 12,000 deaths from respiratory problems.
A thermometer measures temperature by tracking how a liquid or gas expands and contracts with heat. To get an accurate air temperature reading, a thermometer must be placed in the shade — direct sunlight heats the instrument itself and gives a falsely high reading.
A storm surge is a wall of ocean water pushed ashore by hurricane winds, and it is the most deadly part of a hurricane. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the storm surge along the Mississippi Gulf Coast reached up to 28 feet — as tall as a three-story building — and caused catastrophic flooding.
Snow has actually fallen in parts of the Sahara Desert on rare occasions. In January 2018, snow fell on the town of Aïn Séfra in Algeria for the third time in nearly 40 years. The Sahara is hot in summer but parts of it sit at high enough elevation to experience freezing temperatures in winter.
Hailstorms cause more than $10 billion in damage to crops, vehicles, and buildings in the United States each year, making them one of the costliest types of severe weather. A single large hailstorm can dent thousands of cars and punch holes in roofs across an entire city.
You can only see a rainbow when the Sun is less than 42 degrees above the horizon. When the Sun is higher in the sky, a rainbow would appear below the horizon — underground — so you cannot see it. This is why rainbows are most common in early morning or late afternoon.