60 Fun Facts About Weather Trivia for Kids

Which colour is on the outer edge of a rainbow?

Red: but when a second, fainter rainbow appears outside the first, its colours run the other way, with red on the inside edge.

Where must the Sun be for you to see a rainbow?

Behind you: a rainbow always forms in the part of the sky opposite the Sun, and from an aeroplane or a mountain top you can sometimes see it as a full circle.

What are clouds mostly made of?

Tiny water droplets and ice crystals: each one needs a speck of dust or sea salt to form around, so there is a bit of grit at the heart of every droplet.

What do we call a cloud that forms right at ground level?

Fog: it often forms on clear, calm nights, when the ground cools quickly and chills the damp air lying just above it.

Which cloud type is the tall, anvil-topped one that brings thunderstorms?

Cumulonimbus: it towers up like a mountain until it can climb no higher, so its top stops and spreads out flat, and high winds often draw it out into the anvil shape.

The thin, wispy clouds high in the sky that are made of ice crystals are called what?

Cirrus comes from a word for a curl of hair. These clouds often form ahead of a warm front, so a sky filling with them can mean the weather is about to change.

London pharmacist Luke Howard named the clouds in 1802, borrowing words like cumulus and stratus from which language?

Latin. Howard only watched the sky as a hobby, yet the names he proposed caught on so well that forecasters around the world still use them today.

In the water cycle, what is it called when water vapour in the air turns back into liquid drops?

Condensation is why a cold glass gets wet on the outside on a humid day: water vapour in the warm air cools against the glass and turns back into drops.

What powers the water cycle?

Energy from the Sun heats seas, lakes and puddles until the water rises as vapour, and Earth's gravity then pulls it back down as rain and snow.

Where is most of Earth's fresh water held?

Glaciers and ice caps hold more than two-thirds of Earth's fresh water, itself under 3% of all water, while every river and lake together holds well under 1% of it.

What is the word for water vapour that plants release into the air?

Transpiration: a plant keeps very little of the water its roots take in, and as much as 99% of it escapes as vapour through tiny pores in the leaves.

Cartoons draw raindrops as teardrops, but what does a large falling raindrop really look like?

A hamburger bun: the air a big drop falls through presses its underside flat, while the smallest raindrops are pulled into round balls by surface tension.

What is the special word for the earthy smell in the air when rain falls on dry ground?

Petrichor is the scent of oils that build up in rock and soil in dry spells and are freed by rain. Two Australian scientists named it in 1964 from Greek words for stone and the blood of the gods.

Mawsynram, often called the wettest place on Earth, gets nearly 12 metres of rain a year in which country?

India. Mawsynram sits high in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, and villagers working outdoors there wear knups, full-body rain shields made of bamboo.

The seasonal wind that brings South Asia its summer rains is called what?

Monsoon comes from the Arabic mawsim, 'season': the wind blows off the land in the cooler months, then reverses in summer to blow in from the ocean, bringing the rains.

The Atacama, one of the driest places on Earth, is in which country?

Chile. Parts of the Atacama never see rain, and its dry, clear air is so good for stargazing that some of the world's biggest telescopes have been built there.

A single snow crystal always grows on which basic shape?

A hexagon: water molecules lock into a six-sided pattern as they freeze, and the snowflake's six arms then sprout from the corners.

Ice is clear, so why does snow look white?

Light bounces off all the crystal surfaces in every direction, so every colour of sunlight comes back mixed together, and that mix looks white.

What is a big, fluffy snowflake really made of?

Many crystals stuck together: the biggest flakes form when the air is just above freezing, which leaves the crystals wet and sticky enough to cling to one another as they fall.

Officially, a US blizzard needs no set depth of snow, just strong winds and what else?

Very low visibility: winds of 35 mph or more must whip up enough snow to hide anything a quarter of a mile away for three hours, even if no new snow is falling at all.

Which state's Mount Baker ski area, named for a Pacific Northwest volcano, got 95 feet of snow in 1998-99?

Washington. Mount Baker's ski area measured 1,140 inches of snow that season, and a panel of experts checked the daily readings before the record was made official.

What holds a growing hailstone up inside a thundercloud?

Fast-rising air: the storm's updraft keeps the stone aloft while water freezes onto it in onion-like layers, and it falls once it grows too heavy for the wind to hold.

Roughly how wide was the record US hailstone, which fell on Vivian, South Dakota, in 2010?

8 inches across, and it weighed nearly 2 pounds. Stones that large can fall at more than 100 mph.

In the United States, what does the word 'sleet' mean?

Small pellets of frozen raindrops is the American meaning. In Britain, sleet instead means snow that has partly melted on the way down and falls mixed with rain.

What makes the sound of thunder?

Air heated by lightning expanding explosively makes a sharp crack close by. Farther away it rumbles, because the sound from different parts of the long bolt reaches you at different times.

To judge the distance to a lightning strike, you count the seconds from the flash until what?

The thunder arrives late because sound is far slower than light: it needs about five seconds to cover a mile, so a 10-second gap puts the strike about 2 miles away.

About how often does lightning flash somewhere on Earth?

Dozens of times a second: satellites count about 44 flashes every second, some 1.4 billion a year, and most never touch the ground because they stay inside the clouds.

Which South American lake has more lightning than anywhere else on Earth?

Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, lights up with thunderstorms so reliably that sailors used the flashes as a beacon to steer by for centuries.

What are the glassy tubes that form when lightning melts sandy ground called?

Fulgurites form in a flash: the bolt's heat fuses the sand into a hollow, branching glass tube that traces the lightning's path underground, sometimes for several metres.

As of 2025, the longest lightning flash on record stretched about how far?

About 500 miles: the 2017 flash ran 515 miles from eastern Texas to near Kansas City, far too long to follow from the ground, so it took a satellite to measure it.

A spinning column of air that stretches from a storm cloud down to the ground is called what?

A tornado strikes the United States about 1,200 times a year, more than any other country. It does its damage with wind and flying debris, and opening the windows so the house will not 'explode' is a myth.

What is a spinning funnel of air called when it forms over a lake or the sea instead of land?

A waterspout is usually much weaker than its cousin on land, but it can lift fish and frogs into the air, which many scientists think explains old tales of animals raining from the sky.

The scale that rates tornadoes from 0 to 5 by the damage they cause is named after which scientist?

Fujita pioneered flying over wrecked towns to map the damage, and his scale works backwards from that damage to judge how strong each storm must have been.

What is an Atlantic hurricane's equivalent called in the northwest Pacific?

A typhoon is the very same kind of storm as a hurricane, so one that drifts west across the International Date Line keeps its name but swaps labels, as Hurricane Genevieve did in 2014.

What is the weather usually like in the eye at the centre of a hurricane?

Calm, with light winds and often clear sky, yet the eye is ringed by the eyewall, a wall of towering thunderstorms where the hurricane's strongest winds blow.

The Saffir-Simpson scale sorts hurricanes into Categories 1 to 5 by measuring what?

How fast its winds blow is all that counts: Category 5 starts at 157 mph, and the scale ignores storm surge and flooding rain, which is why a low-category hurricane can still be deadly.

Why does a hurricane weaken quickly after moving over land?

It loses its warm, moist ocean air, the fuel that keeps it going, and pulls in dry air instead. Over flat country the circulation can still take two or three days to die away.

What happens to a devastating hurricane's name?

It is retired and replaced on the list by a new name, because using it again for another storm would be insensitive. Ordinary names come round again every six years.

What causes wind?

Differences in air pressure push air from where pressure is high towards where it is low, and the bigger the difference over a short distance, the stronger the wind blows.

A 'northerly' wind blows in which direction?

From the north to the south: a wind is named for where it comes from, not where it is heading, which is why the 'westerlies' of the middle latitudes blow from the west.

Which instrument, usually with little spinning cups, measures wind speed?

Anemometer comes from anemos, the Greek for wind. The harder the wind blows, the faster its cups whirl, and counting the turns gives the wind's speed.

Which instrument measures air pressure and helps forecasters tell if a storm is coming?

Barometer credit usually goes to Evangelista Torricelli. He filled his tube with mercury, over 13 times heavier than water, so the column stands under a metre tall where water would need more than 10.

At what temperature does water freeze on the Fahrenheit scale?

At 32: in his own paper, Daniel Fahrenheit set zero at the temperature of a freezing mix of ice, water and salt, which is why plain water freezes well above zero on his scale.

Which temperature scale began upside down in 1742, with boiling water numbered below freezing?

Celsius. Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, put boiling at 0 and freezing at 100, and within three years others had turned his scale the right way up.

The hottest air temperature officially recorded on Earth, 134 degrees Fahrenheit in 1913, was measured where?

Death Valley, California, got the title back in 2012, when experts ruled that a hotter 1922 reading from Libya, the record for 90 years, was an observer's mistake.

Which continent is the windiest and driest of them all?

Antarctica is far drier than its ice suggests: the high interior gets the equivalent of less than 5 centimetres of rain a year, and the snow has piled up only because it almost never melts.

Which northeastern US mountain held the world wind-speed record of 231 mph from 1934 until 1996?

Mount Washington is the Northeast's highest peak and sits in the path of frequent storms. Its winds are one reason no trees grow above about 4,400 feet, nearly 2,000 feet below the summit.

Earth is closest to the Sun in January, so what really causes the seasons?

The tilt of Earth's axis leans each half of the planet towards the Sun for part of the year, bringing longer days and more direct sunlight, and away from it for the rest.

When the Northern Hemisphere is having its hottest months, what season is it in Australia?

Winter. The two halves of the planet always have opposite seasons, which is why Christmas in Australia falls in summer.

By Groundhog Day tradition, what does it mean if the groundhog sees its shadow?

Six more weeks of winter is the forecast, but Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous groundhog of all, has been right well under half the time when checked against US temperature records.

What causes the aurora borealis, the glowing curtains of light near the North Pole?

Particles from the Sun hitting the air make its gases glow, much as a neon sign does: oxygen gives off the greens and reds, and nitrogen the blues and pinks.

The lowest layer of the atmosphere, where almost all weather happens, is called what?

Troposphere means 'sphere of change', from the Greek for a turn: unlike the calmer layer above it, its air is always rising, sinking and mixing, which is what makes weather.

Which instrument measures the amount of water vapour in the air?

Hygrometer dials were long worked by human hair, which stretches as the air gets damper and shrinks as it dries, moving the needle.

What do forecasters release twice a day from hundreds of sites around the world to measure the air high above?

Balloons: each one swells as the air around it thins until it finally bursts high above the clouds, and its instruments drift back down on a small parachute.

What makes the Grand Banks off Newfoundland one of the foggiest places on Earth?

A cold current meets the warm Gulf Stream there: air crossing from the warm water to the icy Labrador Current is chilled into fog, and the same mixing feeds one of the world's richest fishing grounds.

Which planet has a giant storm called the Great Red Spot?

Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been shrinking for more than a century: in the late 1800s it was at least three Earths wide, and now it is only a little wider than one.

On which planet have winds of over 2,000 km/h been measured, the fastest in our Solar System?

Neptune's gales are a puzzle, because the planet is so far out that sunlight there is about 900 times dimmer than on Earth, leaving little heat to stir them.

What is the fast band of wind, about 30,000 feet up, that airliners ride to shorten eastbound flights?

The jet stream blows from west to east at around 100 mph, sometimes far faster, and it follows the boundary between cold and warm air, so its wanderings steer the weather below.

What is the steady flow of charged gas streaming out from the Sun past all the planets called?

The solar wind races outward at about a million miles an hour and blows a vast bubble around the whole Solar System, reaching far beyond the outermost planets.

Which Olympics opened as over 1,000 rockets were fired to keep the rain away?

Beijing 2008. Crews around the city fired the rockets into approaching clouds to make the rain fall early, and officials said a belt of rain was stopped before it reached the stadium.