60 free Meteorology trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Meteorology is the rare science everyone checks every morning and almost nobody studies. This meteorology trivia quiz is for the people who do: the storm chasers, pilots, sailors, gardeners and forecast obsessives who know what a derecho is and want to be asked about it. It covers the instruments and scales (barometer, anemometer, Beaufort, Saffir-Simpson, Enhanced Fujita), the physics of clouds, lightning, thunder and rainbows, the big planetary patterns like the jet stream, monsoons and El Niño, and the record book: the hottest and coldest readings, the wettest town, the fastest non-tornado gust. There are also questions on the history of the field, from Aristotle's treatise and Luke Howard's cloud names to Robert FitzRoy inventing the word 'forecast', the first weather satellite, and the BBC forecaster who is still ribbed about October 1987. Difficulty runs from easy questions about Groundhog Day and the dew point to expert ones about who coined 'petrichor' and 'atmospheric river'. Every answer was checked against meteorological and encyclopaedic reference pages before publishing, and each question carries a citation.
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Q 01Which philosopher wrote the oldest comprehensive treatise on meteorology, around 340 BC?
Aristotle
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.
Q 02Who proposed the cloud-naming system of cumulus, stratus and cirrus in 1802?
Luke Howard
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.
Q 03The Beaufort wind scale was devised in 1805 by a hydrographer serving which country's fleet?
Britain
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'.
Q 04A Saffir-Simpson Category 5 hurricane has sustained winds of at least what speed?
157 mph
The scale was developed in 1971 by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson; proposals for a Category 6 have never been adopted.
Q 05The Enhanced Fujita scale rates tornadoes on how many intensity categories?
Six (0 to 5)
It is a damage scale, so wind speeds are estimates; besides the US it is used in Brazil and France.
Q 06In the Northern Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect deflects moving air in which direction?
To the right
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.
Q 07Who is usually credited with inventing the barometer in 1643?
Evangelista Torricelli
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.
Q 08The earliest known description of an anemometer, in 1450, came from which Italian Renaissance architect?
Leon Battista Alberti
The familiar four-cup design came much later, from Thomas Romney Robinson in 1846.
Q 09The dew point is the temperature to which air must be cooled for its relative humidity to reach what?
100%
When air is saturated the dew point equals the air temperature; otherwise it is always lower.
Q 10Which Japanese meteorologist detected the jet stream in the 1920s near Mount Fuji?
Wasaburo Oishi
Weather watchers had already mapped high-altitude winds after the 1883 Krakatoa eruption spread ash around the globe.
Q 11El Niño takes its name from Peruvian fishermen's reference to whom?
The Christ Child
The warm current was most noticeable around Christmas, hence 'El Niño de Navidad'; the cool phase is La Niña.
Q 12Jacob Bjerknes linked the El Niño feedback in 1969 to an overturning atmospheric cell he named after whom?
Gilbert Walker
Walker had discovered the Southern Oscillation early in the 20th century while trying to predict the Indian monsoon.
Q 13The largest hailstone officially measured, 7.9 inches across, fell in 2010 in which US state?
South Dakota
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.
Q 21The troposphere holds roughly what share of the atmosphere's total mass?
80%
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'.
Q 22In the Köppen climate classification, which letter denotes arid climates?
B
A is tropical, C temperate, D continental and E polar; Wladimir Köppen first published the scheme in 1884.
Q 23Where was Earth's record air temperature of 56.7 °C (134 °F) measured in 1913?
Furnace Creek, Death Valley
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.
Q 14The air around a lightning flash rapidly heats to roughly what temperature?
About 30,000 °C
That is several times hotter than the surface of the Sun; an average negative bolt carries about 30,000 amperes.
Q 15Thunder is produced by what?
A shock wave from air expanding around the lightning channel
The heated air expands faster than sound can otherwise travel, and the sonic shock is heard as a clap or a rolling peal.
Q 16In a primary rainbow, the most intense light leaves the raindrops at roughly what angle?
42 degrees
The fainter secondary bow appears about ten degrees outside the primary one, with its colour order reversed.
Q 17The term 'Tornado Alley' was first used in 1952 as the title of what?
A research project on severe weather
It has no official boundaries; the National Severe Storms Laboratory calls it a media term for areas with high tornado counts.
Q 18A meteorologist in which Australian state first gave personal names to weather systems, between 1887 and 1907?
Queensland
Clement Wragge's habit died with his retirement and was revived in the western Pacific late in the Second World War.
Q 19Atlantic hurricane name lists rotate every how many years?
Six
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.
Q 20The World Meteorological Organization grew out of a nongovernmental body founded in which year?
1873
The WMO convention came into force on 23 March 1950, and the organisation now has 193 members exchanging data 'free and unrestricted'.
Q 24The lowest ground-level temperature ever, -89.2 °C, was measured in 1983 at which station?
Vostok
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.
Q 25Mawsynram, reportedly the wettest place on Earth, is in which Indian state?
Meghalaya
It sits 15 km west of Cherrapunji, the town that held the title for years, in the Khasi Hills.
Q 26Which is the world's driest non-polar desert, with stations that have never recorded rain?
The Atacama
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.
Q 27A 231 mph wind, a world record for 62 years, was measured in 1934 on which mountain?
Mount Washington, New Hampshire
It still holds the record for the fastest gust not linked to a tornado or tropical cyclone.
Q 28Which BBC forecaster seemed to dismiss a viewer's hurricane worry hours before the Great Storm of October 1987?
Michael Fish
He says he was misquoted; the storm killed at least 22 people in England and France and flattened forests.
Q 29The deadliest natural disaster in US history was a 1900 hurricane that struck which Texas city?
Galveston
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.
Q 30Katrina in 2005 killed 1,392 people, the most in the United States since which earlier storm?
The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane
It was also the costliest US tropical cyclone at about $125 billion, and the second Category 5 of that season.