Weather Facts for Kids
Wild facts about weather
The polar vortex is a swirl of cold air over the Arctic that sometimes wobbles and sends freezing air far to the south.
Noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds on Earth, forming about 50 miles up and visible only around twilight.
Snow rollers are rare, naturally formed cylinders of snow created when wind blows a chunk of snow along the ground, rolling it up like a carpet.
A cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud can tower over 12,000 metres high — taller than Mount Everest.
The lovely smell after rain, called petrichor, is partly caused by a chemical released by soil bacteria called geosmin.
The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was minus 89.2 degrees Celsius at Vostok Station in Antarctica in 1983.
A single snowflake can take up to two hours to travel from the cloud where it formed all the way down to the ground.
A bolt of lightning can reach temperatures of about 30,000 degrees Celsius — roughly five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Cloud types were named using Latin in 1802 by Luke Howard. 'Cumulus' means heap, 'stratus' means layer, and 'cirrus' means curl of hair.
A greenish tint to the sky during a thunderstorm can signal that the cloud contains large hailstones, though the exact reason for the green colour is still debated by scientists.