Weather and Nature Trivia: Storms, Records and Extremes

Weather is a category everyone has an opinion about, but few people know the numbers. Learn these and the nature round becomes your strong suit.

Storms Explained

• Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are the same weather phenomenon — the name simply depends on where in the world it forms.
• The eye of a hurricane is a calm, often clear centre surrounded by the storm’s most violent winds.
• Tornadoes produce the fastest wind speeds recorded anywhere on Earth.
• Thunder is the sound of air expanding explosively along a lightning bolt’s path.

Extremes and Records

• A bolt of lightning is several times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
• The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places on Earth, with areas that have recorded almost no rainfall.
• Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest continent.
• No two snowflakes are believed to be exactly alike.

Sky and Sea

• A rainbow appears when sunlight is refracted and reflected through water droplets in the air.
• The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, are caused by charged particles from the Sun striking the atmosphere.
• Roughly 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.

Feeling stormy? Take a free Nature quiz and see how many of these you can turn into points.