60 Fun Facts About Meteorology

Which philosopher wrote the oldest comprehensive treatise on meteorology, around 340 BC?

His Meteorologica runs to four books, three on weather and one on what we would now call chemistry; the word 'meteorology' descends from its title.

Who proposed the cloud-naming system of cumulus, stratus and cirrus in 1802?

He was a Quaker chemist by trade and told Goethe that his real passion was meteorology; the Latin names and Linnaean logic helped the system stick.

The Beaufort wind scale was devised in 1805 by a hydrographer serving which country's fleet?

Francis Beaufort's original 13 classes described the effect on a frigate's sails, from 'just sufficient to give steerage' to 'that which no canvas sails could withstand'.

A Saffir-Simpson Category 5 hurricane has sustained winds of at least what speed?

The scale was developed in 1971 by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson; proposals for a Category 6 have never been adopted.

The Enhanced Fujita scale rates tornadoes on how many intensity categories?

It is a damage scale, so wind speeds are estimates; besides the US it is used in Brazil and France.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect deflects moving air in which direction?

The mathematics appeared in Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis's 1835 paper on water wheels; the deflection is what makes hurricanes spin anticlockwise north of the equator.

Who is usually credited with inventing the barometer in 1643?

Historians suspect the real date was 1644, when he first reported the experiment; Gasparo Berti's earlier water column was not designed to track pressure changes.

The earliest known description of an anemometer, in 1450, came from which Italian Renaissance architect?

The familiar four-cup design came much later, from Thomas Romney Robinson in 1846.

The dew point is the temperature to which air must be cooled for its relative humidity to reach what?

When air is saturated the dew point equals the air temperature; otherwise it is always lower.

Which Japanese meteorologist detected the jet stream in the 1920s near Mount Fuji?

Weather watchers had already mapped high-altitude winds after the 1883 Krakatoa eruption spread ash around the globe.

El Niño takes its name from Peruvian fishermen's reference to whom?

The warm current was most noticeable around Christmas, hence 'El Niño de Navidad'; the cool phase is La Niña.

Jacob Bjerknes linked the El Niño feedback in 1969 to an overturning atmospheric cell he named after whom?

Walker had discovered the Southern Oscillation early in the 20th century while trying to predict the Indian monsoon.

The largest hailstone officially measured, 7.9 inches across, fell in 2010 in which US state?

It landed in Vivian on 23 July 2010 with a circumference of 18.6 inches; the US severe-hail threshold had been raised to one inch that same year.

The air around a lightning flash rapidly heats to roughly what temperature?

That is several times hotter than the surface of the Sun; an average negative bolt carries about 30,000 amperes.

Thunder is produced by what?

The heated air expands faster than sound can otherwise travel, and the sonic shock is heard as a clap or a rolling peal.

In a primary rainbow, the most intense light leaves the raindrops at roughly what angle?

The fainter secondary bow appears about ten degrees outside the primary one, with its colour order reversed.

The term 'Tornado Alley' was first used in 1952 as the title of what?

It has no official boundaries; the National Severe Storms Laboratory calls it a media term for areas with high tornado counts.

A meteorologist in which Australian state first gave personal names to weather systems, between 1887 and 1907?

Clement Wragge's habit died with his retirement and was revived in the western Pacific late in the Second World War.

Atlantic hurricane name lists rotate every how many years?

The lists skip Q, U, X, Y and Z and alternate male and female names; any WMO committee member can ask for a name to be retired.

The World Meteorological Organization grew out of a nongovernmental body founded in which year?

The WMO convention came into force on 23 March 1950, and the organisation now has 193 members exchanging data 'free and unrestricted'.

The troposphere holds roughly what share of the atmosphere's total mass?

It also holds 99% of the water vapour and aerosols, which is why nearly all weather happens there; the name comes from the Greek for 'turning'.

In the Köppen climate classification, which letter denotes arid climates?

A is tropical, C temperate, D continental and E polar; Wladimir Köppen first published the scheme in 1884.

Where was Earth's record air temperature of 56.7 °C (134 °F) measured in 1913?

Several experts question the 1913 reading; if it were struck off, three sites would tie at 54.0 °C, including Furnace Creek again in 2013.

The lowest ground-level temperature ever, -89.2 °C, was measured in 1983 at which station?

Satellites have since sensed -92 °C on the ice surface between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, but that reading is not counted as an air temperature record.

Mawsynram, reportedly the wettest place on Earth, is in which Indian state?

It sits 15 km west of Cherrapunji, the town that held the title for years, in the Khasi Hills.

Which is the world's driest non-polar desert, with stations that have never recorded rain?

It sits in a two-sided rain shadow between the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range, and is also the largest fog desert on Earth.

A 231 mph wind, a world record for 62 years, was measured in 1934 on which mountain?

It still holds the record for the fastest gust not linked to a tornado or tropical cyclone.

Which BBC forecaster seemed to dismiss a viewer's hurricane worry hours before the Great Storm of October 1987?

He says he was misquoted; the storm killed at least 22 people in England and France and flattened forests.

The deadliest natural disaster in US history was a 1900 hurricane that struck which Texas city?

Estimates run from 6,000 to 12,000 dead, with 8,000 the figure most often cited; it remains the fourth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.

Katrina in 2005 killed 1,392 people, the most in the United States since which earlier storm?

It was also the costliest US tropical cyclone at about $125 billion, and the second Category 5 of that season.

In Daniel Fahrenheit's original 1724 scale, 0 °F was set as the freezing point of what?

The upper point was his estimate of human body temperature, first 90 °F and later 96 °F.

In Anders Celsius's original 1742 proposal, what temperature was the boiling point of water?

The scale was upside down, with freezing at 100; it was flipped after his death and called 'centigrade' in many languages for years.

'Derecho', a long-lived line of damaging thunderstorm winds, comes from the Spanish for what?

It was chosen in 1888 to contrast with 'tornado', a twisted wind, after a storm that crossed Iowa in 1877.

A haboob, an intense dust storm driven by thunderstorm downdrafts, takes its name from which language?

The word means 'blasting' or 'drifting'; the wall of dust forms when cold air rushes down out of a storm and hits the ground.

A dry, warm downslope wind on the lee side of a mountain range is known by which German name?

It happens because moist air cools slowly as it rises and dry air warms quickly as it sinks; the Rockies' version is the Chinook.

What is virga?

The visible streaks hanging under a cloud are also called a dry storm; if the rain does reach the ground it is a precipitation shaft.

Mammatus clouds, the pouches that hang beneath a storm cloud, are named from the Latin for what?

They most often appear under cumulonimbus clouds but can attach to other cloud types too.

Noctilucent clouds, the highest in Earth's atmosphere, form at roughly what altitude?

They are made of ice crystals only 100 nanometres wide, and there is no confirmed sighting before 1885.

'Petrichor', the scent of rain on dry ground, was coined in 1964 by researchers from where?

Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Thomas built the word from the Greek for stone and for the fluid in the veins of the gods.

The mirage called a Fata Morgana is named, via Italian, after which figure of Arthurian legend?

The mirages are common in the Strait of Messina, where they were taken for fairy castles conjured by her magic.

Which former captain of HMS Beagle invented the word 'forecast' for his daily weather predictions?

He founded what became the Met Office in 1854 to get weather warnings to sailors and fishermen.

The Met Office was established on 1 August 1854 as a small department within which UK body?

Its first network was 15 coastal stations that could hoist visual gale warnings for ships.

According to the Groundhog Day tradition, what happens if the groundhog sees its shadow on 2 February?

The superstition is Pennsylvania Dutch; if the animal sees no shadow, spring is supposed to arrive early.

Before the butterfly, Edward Lorenz illustrated the 'butterfly effect' with which creature?

He was persuaded that a butterfly setting off a tornado was more poetic; his work put atmospheric instability on a quantitative footing.

What was the name of the first operational weather satellite, launched in 1960?

The acronym stands for Television Infrared Observation Satellite; it was NASA's first test of whether satellites could study the Earth.

The term 'atmospheric river' was coined in the early 1990s by researchers at which university?

Reginald Newell and Yong Zhu chose it to capture how narrow the moisture plumes are; the Pineapple Express from Hawaii is the best-known example.

On what surface did Wilson Bentley catch the snowflakes he was first to photograph in detail?

The Vermont farmer's technique is essentially the one still used, and he popularised the idea that no two flakes are alike.

The eye of a tropical cyclone is typically how wide?

It is ringed by the eyewall, where the storm's tallest thunderstorms and strongest winds are found.

The Northwestern Pacific typhoon basin accounts for roughly what share of the world's tropical cyclones?

The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center for the basin is in Japan, with other warning centres in Hawaii, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

The flat top of a mature cumulonimbus cloud is usually compared to what object?

The shape forms where rising air hits the inversion near the tropopause and spreads out; the shelf can run ahead of the storm for kilometres.

Which mentor-and-protégé pair are credited with the birth of weather forecasting as a science?

Beaufort also devised a weather notation code he used in his journals for the rest of his life.

Which son of Korea's King Sejong invented the first standardised rain gauge in 1441?

The gauges were sent across the Joseon kingdom to assess land taxes based on a farmer's potential harvest.

Who in 1686 published a systematic study of trade winds and monsoons, tying them to solar heating?

Hadley later added the role of Earth's rotation in what is now called the Hadley cell.

Which Norwegian argued in 1904 that weather could be forecast by calculation from natural laws?

Lewis Fry Richardson tried the idea by hand in 1922, and computers made it feasible from the 1950s.

Who published 'Weather Prediction by Numerical Process' in 1922?

His hand-computed trial forecast was hopelessly wrong, but his method underpins modern numerical prediction.

In 1946 the Beaufort scale was extended to how many forces, for use in special cases like typhoons?

The extended scale is still used in Taiwan, mainland China and Vietnam.

What was Herbert Saffir's profession when he devised the hurricane scale that bears his name?

The UN had commissioned him in 1969 to study low-cost housing in hurricane-prone areas.

In 2009 the US National Hurricane Center dropped which two factors from Saffir-Simpson categories?

The pure wind scale became operational on 15 May 2010.

Which French naturalist devised a rival cloud classification in 1802 that failed to catch on?

His unusually descriptive French names lost out to Luke Howard's Latin terms, adopted internationally in 1891.

Which prefix marks mid-level clouds such as altocumulus and altostratus?

These clouds can form as low as 2,000 metres above the surface at any latitude.