Home | Welcome | What's New | Site Map | Glossary | Weather Doctor Amazon Store | Book Store | Accolades | Email Us

Weather Journal

Weather Journal

The Weather Doctor's Amazing Weather Facts-2

dividerr

The Weather Doctor has been gathering amazing weather facts for many years. Here are some of them that you can use to impress your friends with your weather knowledge.

WINTER FACTS

The probability of a white Christmas in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is approximately the same as for Washington, DC: 13 percent.

The first Saturday in December is celebrated as Chester Greenwood Day in Farmington, Maine. In 1873, Chester invented earmuffs at the age of 15.

Johannes Kepler published perhaps the first scientific reference to snow crystals in a short treatise entitled On the Six-Cornered Snowflake in 1611.
According to meteorologist Vincent Shaefer, an estimated half million ice crystals are required to cover a one square foot (929 square centimetres) area with snow to a depth of ten inches (25 cm).
Herds of caribou in Canada's north can generate their own weather. Ice fog will form around the herd on especially cold days from the moisture exhaled by the animals.
A large avalanche in North America might release 300,000 cubic yards (230,000 cubic metres) of snow. That's the equivalent of 20 American football fields filled 10 feet (3.05 m) deep with snow.
On March 31, 1998, the air temperature in Sarnia, Ontario dropped from 22oC to 5oC (71.6o F to 41oF) in one hour.
Snowflakes falling at the rate of 3.6 to 6.4 km/hr (2-4 mph) can take about one hour to fall to the ground.
SPRING FACTS
In the eastern United States, Spring weather travels northward at a rate of about 13 miles (20 km) per day.
The lifetime of a typical small cumulus cloud is 10 to 15 minutes.
A small, fluffy cumulus cloud may hold 100 to 1000 tons of liquid water.
More than just gentle showers: Under an average annual rainfall of 700 mm, the total impact energy of raindrops hitting the ground can be as much as 4000 tonnes of TNT.
During the tornado outbreak of May 3, 1999, the University of Oklahoma Doppler On Wheels radar unit measured a wind speed in the F5 storm of 142 m/s (318 mph or 512 km/h) a few dozen meters above ground. This is the highest wind speed ever measured in nature.
A large hailstone that fell during a thunderstorm near Vicksburg, Mississippi on May 11, 1894 encased a six-by-eight-inch gopher turtle. A waterspout may have lifted the reptile into the cloud where it subsequently became coated with ice to form the nucleus for the "hailstone.
Cumulonimbus clouds are the tallest clouds. With bases around 1 to 2 km (3000 to 6000 ft) above the ground, the largest may break into the stratosphere at an altitude of around 20 km (65,000 ft).
SUMMER FACTS
If the total wind energy of an average hurricane could be harnessed and converted to electricity, it would supply the US for as much as three years.
Hot-lanta: During the 1996 Summer Olympics, meteorologists at San Jose State University discovered that the urban heat island in Atlanta, Georgia creates thunderstorms south of the city.
During the Dust Bowl years, a black blizzard dumped 12 million tons of topsoil on Chicago, May 12, 1934 -- four pounds for every person in the city.
A corn field of one acre (0.41 ha) gives off 4,000 gallons (15,140 litres) of water per day in evaporation.
Intense updrafts in severe thunderstorms may exceed 160 km/h (100 mph).
Dewfall, caused by hot, humid air moving over the cold water surface of Lake Superior, can add several inches (several cm) of water per month during June, an amount equivalent to the water gain due to precipitation at this time of year.
AUTUMN FACTS
The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed more Americans than the Johnstown Flood , San Francisco Earthquake, and Chicago Fire combined.
A polar air mass moving out of the Arctic across the Mississippi River Basin may evaporate more than nine times the water flowing out of the river mouth in Louisiana.
Only three years in recorded history have not seen tropical storm occurred in the Atlantic Ocean during August: 1941, 1961 and 1997.
GENERAL FACTS
A molecule of water will stay in Earth's atmosphere for an average duration of 10-12 days.
Talk about a headache. If you were to stand outside for a full, average year in Vancouver, British Columbia, your head would be hit by about 54 million raindrops during rain that totals 1117 mm (44 inches).
Although the number of cloud condensation nuclei, those small particles on which cloud droplets may form, varies around planet, the global average concentration is 100 to 200 million per cubic metre of air.
Although most updrafts in the atmosphere have speeds in the order of centimeters per second (0.02 mph), in large thunderstorm cells, they can exceed 1800 cm/s or 60 km/h (40 mph).
In 1667, English physicist Robert Hooke devised the first anemometer to provide a numerical measurement of wind speed. The device consisted of a vertically hanging, rectangular plate that could be pushed out by the wind, the greater the angular deviation from the vertical, the stronger the wind.
An estimated 16 million thunderstorms roam the Earth each year, which breaks down to nearly 44,000 rumbling across the planet each day.
Every minute of the day, 1 billion tons (907 million tonnes) of rain falls on the Earth.
The Scots refer to a gust or squall accompanied by a sudden, but short snowfall as a bluffart.
If all the water in the atmosphere fell out as rain, it would cover the entire Earth's surface with a puddle about 1.25 cm (1/2 inch) deep.
The term weather forecast was first used by British Admiral Robert Fitzroy in the 1850s. Fitzroy was captain of HMS Beagle and Britain's first chief meteorologist.

For More Amazing Weather Facts, See
The Weather Doctor's Amazing Weather Facts, and
The Weather Doctor's Amazing Weather Facts--3

Learn More From These Relevant Books
Chosen by The Weather Doctor



The Weather Doctor's Journal The Weather Doctor's Amazing Weather Facts-2 ©2000, 2004, Keith C. Heidorn, PhD. All Rights Reserved.
Correspondence may be sent via email to: see@islandnet.com.

For More Weather Doctor articles, go to our Site Map.




I have recently added many of my lifetime collection of photographs and art works to an on-line shop where you can purchase notecards, posters, and greeting cards, etc. of my best images.

To Purchase Notecard,
Greeting Cards and Posters
featuring my images, visit
The Weather Doctor's
Nature Gallery


In association with Zazzle.com


Now Available! Order Today!

NEW! Now Available in the US!
And Now...The Weather

by Keith C. Heidorn
To Order in Canada:
And Now...The Weather
by Keith C. Heidorn

The BC Weather Book:
From the Sunshine Coast to Storm Mountain

by Keith C. Heidorn










Home | Welcome | What's New | Site Map | Glossary | Weather Doctor Amazon Store | Book Store | Accolades | Email Us
In association with Zazzle.com




Weather Doctor Bookstore