Weather

Did You Know?
  • In 1977, there was a huge blizzard in Buffalo, New York.  It snowed so much that tall snow drifts built up at the Buffalo Zoo.  The snow was so high that some of the animals climbed up the drifts and out of their enclosures and left the zoo!
  • About 1200 tornadoes occur in the United States every year.
  • Trade winds are global winds that blow towards the equator.  There are trade winds in both the southern hemisphere and northern hemisphere. Where the trade winds meet is an area of calm weather called the doldrums.
  • More people die from extreme heat each year than from hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined.
  • In the northern hemisphere, tornadoes rotate in a counterclockwise direction.  In the southern hemisphere, they rotate in a clockwise direction.
  • Tornadoes that form over water are called waterspouts.  The area around the Florida Keys is sometimes referred to as the Waterspout Capital of the World.
  • The white puffs behind the path of an airplane are called contrails.  They are a kind of cloud that was not made by nature. The engines in the plane give off water vapor.  When the water vapor hits the cold air high in the atmosphere, the vapor turns to ice crystals.
  • Every day, about 550 trillion tons of water fall to the earth in the forms of rain, snow, or hail.
  • From the 1920s through the 1940s, Roy Sullivan, who was a National Park Service ranger in Virginia, was struck seven times by lightning.  He survived each time.
  • The United States has more tornadoes than any other country.
  • The Empire State Building is struck by lightning about 23 times a year.
  • The average yearly temperature of the whole earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • Newfoundland, a province of Canada, is one of the cloudiest places on earth.
  • At one time or another, it has snowed in every state in the United States.
  • Of all the tornadoes that occur each year in the world, three-fourths of them happen in the United States.
  • Parts of Africa and the Middle East sometimes have enormous dust storms.  A giants wall of blowing dust is called a haboob.
  • Virga is rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground.  You can often see it in the atmosphere.  It looks like streaks or thin curtains of clouds.
  • The Bermuda Triangle is an area that is known for its numerous waterspouts.  It’s possible that some of the strange disappearances attributed to this mysterious area can be the result of waterspouts pulling airplanes from the sky or sinking boats.
  • Up in the atmosphere, cumulonimbus clouds can be taller than Mt. Everest.
  • About 90% of the water vapor in the atmosphere comes from the oceans.
  • The windiest city in the United States is Amarillo, Texas.
  • In Australia, a hurricane is called a willy willy.