Q 01/05

Sliced in half, a large hailstone shows rings of clear and cloudy ice much like which layered vegetable?

A) A cabbage

B) An onion

C) An artichoke

D) A leek

Answer · why

B) An onion

An onion is the usual comparison: each layer records a different part of the storm cloud. Cloudy rings froze fast and trapped air bubbles, while clear...

Q 02/05

Which odorless gas from generators and grills run indoors kills many people during ice storm power outages?

A) Carbon monoxide

B) Carbon dioxide

C) Hydrogen sulfide

D) Nitrous oxide

Answer · why

A) Carbon monoxide

Carbon monoxide builds up when generators, barbecues and kerosene heaters burn fuel in closed rooms without enough oxygen. Poisonings rise after ice s...

Q 03/05

The 1998 ice storm crippled which Canadian food industry, the world's largest, by wrecking millions of trees?

A) Peaches

B) Ice wine

C) Maple syrup

D) Cranberries

Answer · why

C) Maple syrup

Maple syrup comes from sugar bushes, stands of trees that the weight of ice tore apart in January 1998. Branches snapped by the million, and orchards ...

Q 04/05

Which New England poet's 'Birches' imagines a boy swinging on trees that ice storms have bent to the ground?

A) Walt Whitman

B) Carl Sandburg

C) Emily Dickinson

D) Robert Frost

Answer · why

D) Robert Frost

Robert Frost published the poem in his 1916 collection Mountain Interval. Its speaker knows that ice did the bending, yet says he would rather believe...

Q 05/05

In medieval Europe, what did villagers sound during storms in the hope of driving hail away from their crops?

A) Hunting horns

B) Church bells

C) War drums

D) Brass gongs

Answer · why

B) Church bells

Church bells were rung, and cannons fired, in the belief that noise could break up a hailstorm. The idea lives on in the hail cannons some farms still...