Weather and Nature Trivia: Storms, Records and Extremes

Weather is a category everyone has an opinion about, but few people know the numbers or the reasons behind them. Learn these and the nature round becomes your strong suit — and you will understand the sky a little better too.

Storms Explained

Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are the same thing

All three are tropical cyclones: huge rotating storms that form over warm ocean water. The name depends only on where they form. In the Atlantic and northeast Pacific they are hurricanes; in the northwest Pacific they are typhoons; in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific they are cyclones.

The eye is calm

At the centre of a strong tropical cyclone is the eye — an area of light winds and often clear skies, sometimes tens of kilometres across. It is surrounded by the eyewall, where the strongest winds and heaviest rain are found. People have been caught out by stepping outside as the eye passes, only for the storm to return from the other direction.

Tornadoes hold the wind speed record

The fastest wind speeds measured near Earth's surface have come from tornadoes, with radar recording winds of around 480 km/h in an Oklahoma tornado in 1999. Tornadoes are much smaller than hurricanes but far more intense.

Thunder is the sound of lightning

Lightning heats the air along its path so quickly that the air expands explosively, creating a shock wave we hear as thunder. Because light travels much faster than sound, you can estimate a storm's distance: count the seconds between flash and thunder and divide by three for kilometres (or by five for miles).

Extremes and Records

• Lightning is hotter than the Sun's surface. A bolt can reach around 30,000°C — about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
• The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places on Earth. Some weather stations there have recorded almost no rain for years at a time.
• Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent. The lowest temperature measured by a weather station, −89.2°C, was recorded at Russia's Vostok Station in 1983.
• The highest reliably recorded air temperature is 56.7°C, at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California, in 1913 — although some scientists question that reading.
• Mawsynram and Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, India, are among the wettest places on Earth, with average annual rainfall of over 11 metres.
• Lightning does strike the same place twice. Tall buildings like the Empire State Building are hit many times every year.

Snow, Ice and Hail

Snowflakes form as water vapour freezes onto tiny particles in clouds. Each crystal grows in a six-sided pattern, shaped by the exact temperature and humidity it passes through as it falls. Because no two flakes follow exactly the same path, scientists believe no two complex snowflakes are identical.

Hail is different. Hailstones form inside powerful thunderstorm clouds, where strong updrafts carry raindrops high enough to freeze. They fall, get lifted again and gather new layers of ice, like an onion. Cut a large hailstone in half and you can often see the rings.

Sky and Sea

• Rainbows need the Sun behind you. Sunlight is bent and reflected inside raindrops, splitting into colours. You always see a rainbow with the Sun at your back.
• The Northern Lights are caused by the Sun. Charged particles from the Sun strike gases in Earth's upper atmosphere, making them glow. Oxygen gives green and red; nitrogen gives blue and purple. The southern version is the aurora australis.
• About 71% of Earth's surface is covered by water, and about 97% of that water is salty ocean.
• Fog is simply a cloud at ground level. It forms when air near the surface cools enough for its water vapour to condense.

Weather vs Climate

A favourite quiz distinction: weather is what happens in the atmosphere over hours and days — today's rain, tomorrow's sunshine. Climate is the average pattern over decades. As the saying goes, climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.

Remember It by the Reason

Weather facts stick best when you know the cause. Thunder follows lightning because sound is slower than light. Rainbows need the Sun behind you because of how light reflects inside raindrops. The Atacama is dry because mountains and a cold ocean current block rain. Learn the reason, and the fact comes free.

Feeling stormy? Take a free Geography quiz or explore the Animals & Nature category and see how many of these you can turn into points.