Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
A cold front marks the leading edge of a mass of cold air pushing into a warmer area. As it passes, temperatures can drop dramatically — by 20°F or more in just a few hours. Cold fronts often bring thunderstorms, heavy rain, and gusty winds as the air masses clash.
On July 19, 2022, the United Kingdom recorded its highest temperature ever: 40.3°C (104.5°F) at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. This shattered the previous record by more than a degree and caused widespread disruption, with roads melting and the RAF runway at Coningsby temporarily unusable.
The air pressure inside a tornado drops dramatically — by as much as 100 millibars — creating a powerful sucking effect. This rapid pressure drop is partly what causes buildings to explode outward when a tornado passes directly over them, as the higher pressure inside pushes walls and roofs outward.
Virga is precipitation that falls from clouds but evaporates completely before reaching the ground. You can spot it as ghostly streaks hanging below a cloud base, especially in dry desert regions. It often looks like long wisps or curtains dangling beneath thunderstorms.
Many small animals — including mice, voles, and lemmings — survive brutal Arctic winters by living in a layer of air-filled snow just above the ground called the subnivean zone. The snow above them acts as an insulating blanket, keeping this space around 32°F even when surface temperatures plunge to -40°F.
Wind shear — a change in wind speed or direction at different altitudes — is a hurricane's natural enemy. When strong wind shear blows through a hurricane, it tears the storm apart by disrupting the organized rotation. Meteorologists watch wind shear carefully when predicting whether hurricanes will strengthen or weaken.
Ice fog forms when temperatures plunge well below freezing and tiny ice crystals float in the air instead of water droplets. It is common in Arctic and subarctic regions and can make the air sparkle in sunlight — a phenomenon sometimes called 'diamond dust.'
Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, Australia, on Christmas Eve 1974 with wind gusts of at least 164 mph, destroying about 70% of the city's buildings and killing 71 people. It remains the most compact and intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.
Clouds stay up in the sky partly because of rising air currents called updrafts that constantly push the tiny water droplets upward. The droplets are also so small and light that air resistance slows their fall to almost nothing — they drift gently rather than plummeting like raindrops.
In July 2005, Mumbai, India received 37 inches (944 mm) of rain in just 24 hours during a monsoon downpour — one of the highest daily rainfalls ever recorded for a major city. The floods killed more than 1,000 people and submerged entire neighborhoods under water.