Hurricanes Trivia for Kids
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Hurricanes Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This hurricanes trivia for kids is an easy, friendly quiz for players aged around 8 to 12 who want to understand the biggest storms on Earth. The questions cover how hurricanes form over warm ocean water, why the middle (the eye) is calm and the ring around it (the eyewall) is the fiercest part, which way the winds spin, what the categories on the Saffir-Simpson scale mean, and what a hurricane is called in other parts of the world (typhoon, cyclone). They also explain how storms get their names, why some names are retired, when hurricane season is, and what Hurricane Hunter planes do. There are a few famous storms too, chosen for their record-book facts rather than anything scary: the biggest typhoon ever measured, the strongest winds ever recorded, the storm that filmed itself into Jurassic Park and the one that turned up in a satellite picture in 1960. Every answer comes with a short explanation that teaches one more thing. Older readers can try our main hurricanes trivia (brainpickle.app/quiz/a/hurricanes) or the hard version (brainpickle.app/quiz/a/hard-hurricanes). Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Over which kind of surface do hurricanes form and gather their energy?
Warm ocean water
Warm ocean water. The sea surface needs to be about 27°C (around 80°F) so that enough water evaporates to feed the growing storm with heat and moisture.
Q 02Which way do hurricane winds spin in the Northern Hemisphere?
Counterclockwise
Counterclockwise. Air rushing toward the storm's low-pressure centre is turned by the Earth's rotation, so it spirals inward instead of flowing straight in.
Q 03Hurricanes quickly lose their strength once they move over what?
Land
Land cuts a hurricane off from its fuel supply, and friction with the ground slows its winds, so most storms break up within a few days of coming ashore.
Q 04Where in a hurricane are the very strongest winds found?
In the eyewall
In the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where inflowing air is flung upward, so a hurricane's fiercest winds blow right beside its quietest spot.
Q 05Roughly how wide is a typical hurricane eye?
30 to 65 kilometres
30 to 65 kilometres. Air sinks in the middle of the storm, which keeps the eye mostly free of cloud with light winds.
Q 06A hurricane that forms in the northwestern Pacific Ocean is called what?
A typhoon
A typhoon is the same kind of storm as a hurricane, so when Hurricane Genevieve crossed the International Date Line in 2014 it simply became Typhoon Genevieve.
Q 07Hurricanes coming ashore in the United States often spawn which other kind of storm?
Tornadoes
Tornadoes. A hurricane's broad spin and the shifting winds at its edges can twist its thunderstorms into twisters as the storm comes ashore.
Q 08A storm officially becomes a hurricane when its winds reach at least how fast?
74 miles per hour
74 miles per hour. Below that it is a tropical storm, which gets a name once it reaches 39 mph because short names cause fewer mix-ups than map coordinates.
Q 09What is the top number on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale?
5
5. The top step has no upper limit, so every hurricane with winds of 157 mph or more counts as Category 5, which is why some scientists have proposed adding a Category 6.
Q 10What was the job of Herbert Saffir, who built the hurricane scale around wind damage to buildings?
Engineer
Engineer. Herbert Saffir was studying how windstorms wreck low-cost housing for the United Nations, so he ranked hurricanes by the damage their winds do to buildings.
Q 11Which alert means hurricane-force winds are expected in an area, not just possible?
A hurricane warning
A hurricane warning goes out 36 hours before the first strong winds are due, because getting ready becomes too dangerous once they arrive; a watch means only that a hurricane is possible.
Q 12When does the Atlantic hurricane season officially run?
June 1 to November 30
June 1 to November 30. Those six months were chosen because they take in more than 97 percent of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes, yet a few still form outside them.
Q 13In which month does the Atlantic hurricane season reach its peak?
September
Q 21From 1953 until 1979, Atlantic hurricanes were given only which kind of names?
Women's names
Women's names. US forecasters adopted them in 1953 in place of the phonetic code names Able, Baker and Charlie, and men's names joined the Atlantic lists in 1979.
Q 22A storm surge is a dangerous rise in what?
Sea level along the coast
Sea level along the coast rises because onshore winds pile ocean water against the shore, and the surge is counted separately from the waves that ride on top of it.
Q 23Why do hurricanes almost never form right on the equator?
Too little Coriolis force to spin them
September. By then the tropical Atlantic has warmed through a whole summer of sun and the winds that tear young storms apart are at their weakest; the statistical peak day is September 10.
Q 14Which letters are skipped when naming Atlantic hurricanes?
Q, U, X, Y and Z
Q, U, X, Y and Z are skipped because too few names begin with those letters, which leaves 21 names on each year's Atlantic list.
Q 15Clement Wragge, credited as the first to name storms after people, sometimes picked which group he disliked?
Politicians
Politicians. Naming a storm after one let Wragge report him as 'causing great distress' or 'wandering aimlessly about the Pacific'.
Q 16Why is a hurricane's name sometimes 'retired' and never used again?
It caused terrible deaths or damage
It caused terrible deaths or damage, so reusing the name would be insensitive: an international committee strikes it from the list and picks a replacement starting with the same letter.
Q 17The San Felipe hurricanes took Saint Philip's name because they struck on what?
His feast day
His feast day. Two hurricanes struck the same island on September 13, 52 years apart, so the second, in 1928, is remembered as San Felipe Segundo.
Q 18Until 2020, which alphabet supplied extra names when the Atlantic ran through its list of storm names?
The Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet was needed only in 2005 and 2020, and it was dropped after Zeta, Eta and Theta sounded too alike in warnings; a list of spare names now stands by instead.
Q 19Which US city is home to the National Hurricane Center?
Miami
Miami. The Weather Bureau moved its Jacksonville hurricane warning office there in 1943, the office that grew into the National Hurricane Center.
Q 20What do the 'Hurricane Hunters' do?
Fly airplanes into storms to gather data
Fly airplanes into storms to gather data. In 1943 the pilot Joseph Duckworth flew a small training plane into a hurricane off Texas, proving that it could be done.
Too little Coriolis force to spin them. The turning Earth's sideways push on moving air shrinks to zero at the equator, so a storm must be about 300 miles away to start rotating.
Q 24About how many named tropical cyclones form around the world each year?
80 to 90
80 to 90. That works out to a new named storm somewhere in the world about every four days, and about half of them grow to hurricane strength.
Q 25Which ocean almost never has tropical cyclones because of strong wind shear?
The South Atlantic
The South Atlantic gets so few storms that when a hurricane formed there in March 2004 and struck Brazil, it had no official name and became known unofficially as Catarina.
Q 26Tip, the largest tropical cyclone ever measured, formed over which ocean in 1979?
The Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean. Tip stretched about 2,220 kilometres across, nearly half the size of the contiguous United States, yet it had weakened by the time it reached Japan a week after its peak.
Q 27Hurricane Patricia, whose 215 mph winds in 2015 are the strongest ever measured, came ashore in which country?
Mexico
Mexico. Patricia weakened fast in its last hours at sea and came ashore on a sparsely populated stretch of coast, which kept the toll from the strongest hurricane ever measured far lower than it might have been.
Q 28Which 2012 storm is the widest Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds spanning roughly 1,000 miles?
Sandy
Sandy came ashore in New Jersey as a post-tropical storm, no longer officially a hurricane, yet its vast wind field pushed record storm tides into New York Harbor.
Q 29How wide was the smallest hurricane eye ever measured, seen inside Hurricane Wilma in 2005?
2.3 miles
2.3 miles. As Wilma's eye tightened to that pinhole, its central pressure plunged to 882 millibars, the lowest ever measured in an Atlantic hurricane.
Q 30Which director was on location when Hurricane Iniki struck in 1992 and used footage of the storm in his film?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg and his Jurassic Park crew sheltered in their hotel on the last scheduled day of the location shoot, and his shots of the storm's waves went into the movie.