SciJinks :: Weather :: Fun :: GOES Movieplex

The official start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is December 21 or 22, the day when the North Pole tilts farthest (that is, its full 23.5 degrees) away from the Sun, when daylight is shortest and darkness is longest. For people in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the U.S., the first day of winter has 0 hours of daylight. (But June in Barrow has 24 hours of daylight to make up for it!) Because the Sun hits at the greatest slant, winter is the coldest time of the year in the north.

Earth's axis of rotation happens to be tilted 23.5 degrees. This is the reason for the seasons! The official start of spring is the day that the periods of light and darkness are nearly equal. It is the day after winter when neither the North Pole nor the South Pole is tilted toward the Sun. In northern latitudes where winters are very cold, snow and ice begin to melt and new plants begin to sprout from the thawing ground. In more southern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, or in places that are kept warmer by a nearby ocean, spring may not be so noticeable.

Seasons occur because Earth spins on a lopsided axis. When the North Pole is tilted away from the sun as Earth spins on its axis, it is winter north of the equator and summer south of the equator. And, six months later, when the North Pole is tilted toward the Sun, it's summer in the north and winter in the south. In North America, summer officially begins about June 21. In Australia, far south of the equator, December 21 is the official beginning of summer. Latitude (how far north or south of the equator) has a big effect on how warm or mild summer is, but other things are important too.

Like the official first day of spring, the first day of fall (around September 22 or 23) is a day when neither the North Pole nor the South Pole tilts toward the Sun. It is a day, like the first day of spring, when the periods of light and darkness are nearly equal. Trees and other plants have been growing and blooming in the warmth and long days of summer. Now that the days grow shorter again, it is time for some of them to shed their leaves and prepare for a winter's nap.

A tornado looks like a funnel-shaped cloud, extending down from thick storm clouds toward the ground. Winds up to 480 kilometers per hours (300 miles per hour) have occurred inside these powerful whirlwind storms. When they touch the ground, they make a mess of everything that gets in their path. The United States gets more tornadoes than any other country, most often in the central plain states where cold, dry air flowing south from Canada meets warm, moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. The thunderstorms that develop where they meet are great birthing places for tornadoes. The GOES environmental satellites can "watch" for these severe weather conditions so that weather forecasters can warn people to prepare for possible tornados.

A hurricane is like a gigantic whirlwind that carries lots of water. For their total destructive power, hurricanes are the most violent storms on Earth. The storm forms over the tropical ocean, where the air is warm and humid. As the warm, moist air rises and storm clouds form, winds from outside the storm gain energy from the warm, moist air and begin blowing harder. The storm organizes itself into a violent, rotating system and begins moving north. The storm is called a hurricane when winds reach 46 kilometers per hour (74 miles per hour). Hurricane winds may reach over 240 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour). The GOES environmental satellites can easily see and track the hurricane and help forecast where it will hit land.

Lightning and Thunder

Lightning occurs when electricity travels between areas of opposite electrical charge within a cloud, between clouds, or from a cloud to the ground. Lightning bolts between cloud and ground start with electrons (negatively charged particles) zig-zagging downward from the cloud, drawing a streamer of positively charged ions up from the ground. When they meet, an intense wave of positive charge travels upward at about 96,000 kilometers (about 60,000 miles) per second! This process may repeat several times in less than half a second, making the lightning seem to flicker.

The wind is caused by a complex collection of forces. Warming and cooling of the air causes changes in density, or pressure. Air tends to move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Even very small differences in pressure from one area to another can cause very strong winds. Friction from obstacles like trees, mountains, and buildings affect winds, slowing it down, or creating updrafts, downdrafts, funneling effects, and so on. Where there are no obstacles, such as the plains of the Midwest, winds can pack tremendous energy, such as during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s (see Precipitation/Drought).

During a hurricane, it is often the huge waves, high seas, and flooding, rather than the high winds, that cause most of the damage along a coastline. The winds blowing inland push water ahead of them, causing huge waves. Also, a hurricane brings with it a dramatic drop in atmospheric pressure, which causes the sea level to rise just like soda in a straw when you suck on it. Combine these factors with heavy rains, and the ocean level may rise several meters above normal, totally swamping coastal areas that are usually well-above the water line. If all these conditions coincide with a high tide, the storm surge will be even worse.

Perhaps it is the long periods of calm between storms that has given weather a reputation as a boring subject of conversation. But without those periods, when would we ever be able to have picnics, ball games, camping trips, and many of the other outdoor experiences that make life anything but boring? Wind occurs when the atmospheric pressure in one area is greater, even by the tiniest amount, than the atmospheric pressure in an area nearby. The air then moves from higher pressure to lower pressure to even things out. If the air is calm, then things must be pretty well evened out-at least for the time being.

Nothing can bring a modern, bustling city to a grinding halt faster than a winter blizzard. This cold, windy, winter storm carries a huge amount of moisture in the form of fine, dry, powdery particles of snow, which can reduce visibility to practically zero. A blizzard can quickly bury a city in snow, bring down power and communication lines under the weight of layers of ice, and leave people stranded in cars, offices, and shops. Accurate forecasting and warning of blizzards can allow people and city leaders to prepare and minimize damage, injury, and death.

Did you ever wonder whether it could rain so hard that you could actually drown just be being outside and breathing? People in Holt, Missouri, must have wondered that on June 22, 1947, when 30 centimeters (12 inches) of rain fell in just 42 minutes! That's about the average amount of rain that southern California gets over a whole year! Rain and other forms of precipitation move water from place to place on Earth and create fresh water from the salt water of the oceans. If not for this complex process, called the hydrologic cycle, probably few plants and animals would live outside the oceans.

When people traveled by horse-drawn sleds during the winter, a little snow hardly slowed them down. Now, with everyone traveling by automobile, bus, plane, or train, snow creates big headaches for those whose job is keeping traffic moving-or even for those trying to get out of their driveways. Sand and salt are used on the roads to melt the ice and snow and provide more traction. But the salt corrodes the metal of cars and damages the roads. If traveling in winter seemed hard, now, in many colder climates, travel in summer is harder because of all the delays for road repair work!

If each winter you look forward to skating on the pond near your home, you probably have warm feelings about ice. If you have to drive to work on ice, however, ice may strike icy terror into your heart. In cold climates, ice may take many forms. It may fall from the sky as frozen rain or sleet. It may form as supercooled rain hits very cold surfaces on the ground, making an icy glaze. It may be snow that has melted and refrozen as temperatures dropped below freezing at night. Or, it may be an accumulation of solid ice on the surface of a lake or pond that you can skate or walk upon.

Wildfire is often the direct effect of weather conditions. Long periods without rain cause grasses and other native plants to become extremely dry. Then, if a hot, dry wind begins to blow, the slightest spark can start a fire that in just a few minutes can grow into a monster too huge and too hot to control. Such fires are common in places where nature and human habitat meet, with nature providing the fuel and humans providing the spark by way of careless campfires, cigarette butts, or sparks from off-road vehicles. The fires in the movie are in Australia.

Land near rivers has long been a favorite place for people to build farms and cities, because the soil is fertile and the river provides a convenient way to transport goods. But during heavy rain, excess water from large areas of land runs toward the river. Too much water, and the river rises and spills over its banks. In many cases, people have built levees to raise the banks of the river in an attempt to keep it from overflowing, but sometimes these just make matters worse for people living farther downriver.

Hailstones are frozen "balls of rain" that form in clouds. They may be small as peas or large as golf balls-or larger. Frozen drops of rain (or some other solid "seed," even insects) are tossed around by the strong currents inside a rain cloud, alternately adding a layer of water in the warmer regions of the cloud, then freezing that layer in the colder regions of the cloud. A hailstone will grow to the size of a golf ball in just 5 to 10 minutes in the cloud. When it gets too heavy to stay aloft by the force of the currents in the cloud, it falls to Earth.

A rainbow is a good sign that the rain is ending. The clouds have parted enough to let the Sun shine through and the Sun must be behind you. Because of your particular location, the rainbow you see is different from anyone else's. In "your rainbow," each droplet of water in the air is reflecting sunlight, bending the light a little in the process and separating it into all its colors. Because of your angle, you see only the one color that each drop reflects directly to you. But the effect of seeing the reflected light from millions of drops creates a whole rainbow of colors in an arc that may seem to touch the ground at one or both ends and rise high into the sky.

From 1931-1939, the American midwestern and southern plains suffered a terrible drought. This time is remembered as the Dust Bowl. Crops dried up, leaving the bare plowed soil to blow away. The result? Terrible dust storms. Farm families either left their homes or died. In his book Farming the Dust Bowl, Lawrence Svobida, a wheat farmer from Kansas, wrote "So the Dust Bowl had taught us another lesson; namely, that bare ground exposed to the sun will transform warm breezes into fiery blasts. The hot wind seemed to rob all vegetation of its vitality. This was my first experience of a wind that caused my face to blister so that the skin peeled off."

The highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United States was 57� C (134� F) on July 10, 1913, in Death Valley, California. The highest temperature ever officially recorded in the world was 58� C (136� F) on September 13, 1922, in El Azizia, Libya (northern Africa). Ordinary summer temperatures of 32-43� C (90-110� F), especially when the humidity is also high, is enough to make humans miserable or ill, especially when they are used to being indoors in air conditioned comfort.

The lowest temperature ever recorded in the world was -89� C (-129� F) in Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983. The lowest temperature observed in the United States was -62� C (-79.8� F) in the Endicott Mountains of northern Alaska on Jan. 23, 1971. The lowest ever recorded in the lower 48 states was -56.5� C (-69.7� F) at Rogers Pass, in Lewis and Clark County, Montana., on Jan. 20, 1954. Even much warmer temperatures above -18� C (0� F) have often caused the deaths of people exposed to the cold for a few hours or less.

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Seasons

Winter	The official start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is December 21 or 22, the day when the North Pole tilts farthest (that is, its full 23.5 degrees) away from the Sun, when daylight is shortest and darkness is longest. For people in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the U.S., the first day of winter has 0 hours of daylight. (But June in Barrow has 24 hours of daylight to make up for it!) Because the Sun hits at the greatest slant, winter is the coldest time of the year in the north.
Spring	Earth's axis of rotation happens to be tilted 23.5 degrees. This is the reason for the seasons! The official start of spring is the day that the periods of light and darkness are nearly equal. It is the day after winter when neither the North Pole nor the South Pole is tilted toward the Sun. In northern latitudes where winters are very cold, snow and ice begin to melt and new plants begin to sprout from the thawing ground. In more southern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, or in places that are kept warmer by a nearby ocean, spring may not be so noticeable.
Summer	Seasons occur because Earth spins on a lopsided axis. When the North Pole is tilted away from the sun as Earth spins on its axis, it is winter north of the equator and summer south of the equator. And, six months later, when the North Pole is tilted toward the Sun, it's summer in the north and winter in the south. In North America, summer officially begins about June 21. In Australia, far south of the equator, December 21 is the official beginning of summer. Latitude (how far north or south of the equator) has a big effect on how warm or mild summer is, but other things are important too.
Fall	Like the official first day of spring, the first day of fall (around September 22 or 23) is a day when neither the North Pole nor the South Pole tilts toward the Sun. It is a day, like the first day of spring, when the periods of light and darkness are nearly equal. Trees and other plants have been growing and blooming in the warmth and long days of summer. Now that the days grow shorter again, it is time for some of them to shed their leaves and prepare for a winter's nap.
Storms

Tornado	A tornado looks like a funnel-shaped cloud, extending down from thick storm clouds toward the ground. Winds up to 480 kilometers per hours (300 miles per hour) have occurred inside these powerful whirlwind storms. When they touch the ground, they make a mess of everything that gets in their path. The United States gets more tornadoes than any other country, most often in the central plain states where cold, dry air flowing south from Canada meets warm, moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. The thunderstorms that develop where they meet are great birthing places for tornadoes. The GOES environmental satellites can "watch" for these severe weather conditions so that weather forecasters can warn people to prepare for possible tornados.
Hurricane	A hurricane is like a gigantic whirlwind that carries lots of water. For their total destructive power, hurricanes are the most violent storms on Earth. The storm forms over the tropical ocean, where the air is warm and humid. As the warm, moist air rises and storm clouds form, winds from outside the storm gain energy from the warm, moist air and begin blowing harder. The storm organizes itself into a violent, rotating system and begins moving north. The storm is called a hurricane when winds reach 46 kilometers per hour (74 miles per hour). Hurricane winds may reach over 240 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour). The GOES environmental satellites can easily see and track the hurricane and help forecast where it will hit land.
Lightning and Thunder	Lightning occurs when electricity travels between areas of opposite electrical charge within a cloud, between clouds, or from a cloud to the ground. Lightning bolts between cloud and ground start with electrons (negatively charged particles) zig-zagging downward from the cloud, drawing a streamer of positively charged ions up from the ground. When they meet, an intense wave of positive charge travels upward at about 96,000 kilometers (about 60,000 miles) per second! This process may repeat several times in less than half a second, making the lightning seem to flicker.
Winds	The wind is caused by a complex collection of forces. Warming and cooling of the air causes changes in density, or pressure. Air tends to move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Even very small differences in pressure from one area to another can cause very strong winds. Friction from obstacles like trees, mountains, and buildings affect winds, slowing it down, or creating updrafts, downdrafts, funneling effects, and so on. Where there are no obstacles, such as the plains of the Midwest, winds can pack tremendous energy, such as during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s (see Precipitation/Drought).
Storm Surge	During a hurricane, it is often the huge waves, high seas, and flooding, rather than the high winds, that cause most of the damage along a coastline. The winds blowing inland push water ahead of them, causing huge waves. Also, a hurricane brings with it a dramatic drop in atmospheric pressure, which causes the sea level to rise just like soda in a straw when you suck on it. Combine these factors with heavy rains, and the ocean level may rise several meters above normal, totally swamping coastal areas that are usually well-above the water line. If all these conditions coincide with a high tide, the storm surge will be even worse.
Calm Weather	Perhaps it is the long periods of calm between storms that has given weather a reputation as a boring subject of conversation. But without those periods, when would we ever be able to have picnics, ball games, camping trips, and many of the other outdoor experiences that make life anything but boring? Wind occurs when the atmospheric pressure in one area is greater, even by the tiniest amount, than the atmospheric pressure in an area nearby. The air then moves from higher pressure to lower pressure to even things out. If the air is calm, then things must be pretty well evened out-at least for the time being.
Blizzard	Nothing can bring a modern, bustling city to a grinding halt faster than a winter blizzard. This cold, windy, winter storm carries a huge amount of moisture in the form of fine, dry, powdery particles of snow, which can reduce visibility to practically zero. A blizzard can quickly bury a city in snow, bring down power and communication lines under the weight of layers of ice, and leave people stranded in cars, offices, and shops. Accurate forecasting and warning of blizzards can allow people and city leaders to prepare and minimize damage, injury, and death.
Precipitation

Rain	Did you ever wonder whether it could rain so hard that you could actually drown just be being outside and breathing? People in Holt, Missouri, must have wondered that on June 22, 1947, when 30 centimeters (12 inches) of rain fell in just 42 minutes! That's about the average amount of rain that southern California gets over a whole year! Rain and other forms of precipitation move water from place to place on Earth and create fresh water from the salt water of the oceans. If not for this complex process, called the hydrologic cycle, probably few plants and animals would live outside the oceans.
Snow	When people traveled by horse-drawn sleds during the winter, a little snow hardly slowed them down. Now, with everyone traveling by automobile, bus, plane, or train, snow creates big headaches for those whose job is keeping traffic moving-or even for those trying to get out of their driveways. Sand and salt are used on the roads to melt the ice and snow and provide more traction. But the salt corrodes the metal of cars and damages the roads. If traveling in winter seemed hard, now, in many colder climates, travel in summer is harder because of all the delays for road repair work!
Ice	If each winter you look forward to skating on the pond near your home, you probably have warm feelings about ice. If you have to drive to work on ice, however, ice may strike icy terror into your heart. In cold climates, ice may take many forms. It may fall from the sky as frozen rain or sleet. It may form as supercooled rain hits very cold surfaces on the ground, making an icy glaze. It may be snow that has melted and refrozen as temperatures dropped below freezing at night. Or, it may be an accumulation of solid ice on the surface of a lake or pond that you can skate or walk upon.
Fires	Wildfire is often the direct effect of weather conditions. Long periods without rain cause grasses and other native plants to become extremely dry. Then, if a hot, dry wind begins to blow, the slightest spark can start a fire that in just a few minutes can grow into a monster too huge and too hot to control. Such fires are common in places where nature and human habitat meet, with nature providing the fuel and humans providing the spark by way of careless campfires, cigarette butts, or sparks from off-road vehicles. The fires in the movie are in Australia.
Flood	Land near rivers has long been a favorite place for people to build farms and cities, because the soil is fertile and the river provides a convenient way to transport goods. But during heavy rain, excess water from large areas of land runs toward the river. Too much water, and the river rises and spills over its banks. In many cases, people have built levees to raise the banks of the river in an attempt to keep it from overflowing, but sometimes these just make matters worse for people living farther downriver.
Hail	Hailstones are frozen "balls of rain" that form in clouds. They may be small as peas or large as golf balls-or larger. Frozen drops of rain (or some other solid "seed," even insects) are tossed around by the strong currents inside a rain cloud, alternately adding a layer of water in the warmer regions of the cloud, then freezing that layer in the colder regions of the cloud. A hailstone will grow to the size of a golf ball in just 5 to 10 minutes in the cloud. When it gets too heavy to stay aloft by the force of the currents in the cloud, it falls to Earth.
Rainbow	A rainbow is a good sign that the rain is ending. The clouds have parted enough to let the Sun shine through and the Sun must be behind you. Because of your particular location, the rainbow you see is different from anyone else's. In "your rainbow," each droplet of water in the air is reflecting sunlight, bending the light a little in the process and separating it into all its colors. Because of your angle, you see only the one color that each drop reflects directly to you. But the effect of seeing the reflected light from millions of drops creates a whole rainbow of colors in an arc that may seem to touch the ground at one or both ends and rise high into the sky.
Drought	From 1931-1939, the American midwestern and southern plains suffered a terrible drought. This time is remembered as the Dust Bowl. Crops dried up, leaving the bare plowed soil to blow away. The result? Terrible dust storms. Farm families either left their homes or died. In his book Farming the Dust Bowl, Lawrence Svobida, a wheat farmer from Kansas, wrote "So the Dust Bowl had taught us another lesson; namely, that bare ground exposed to the sun will transform warm breezes into fiery blasts. The hot wind seemed to rob all vegetation of its vitality. This was my first experience of a wind that caused my face to blister so that the skin peeled off."
Temperatures

Heat	The highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United States was 57� C (134� F) on July 10, 1913, in Death Valley, California. The highest temperature ever officially recorded in the world was 58� C (136� F) on September 13, 1922, in El Azizia, Libya (northern Africa). Ordinary summer temperatures of 32-43� C (90-110� F), especially when the humidity is also high, is enough to make humans miserable or ill, especially when they are used to being indoors in air conditioned comfort.
Cold	The lowest temperature ever recorded in the world was -89� C (-129� F) in Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983. The lowest temperature observed in the United States was -62� C (-79.8� F) in the Endicott Mountains of northern Alaska on Jan. 23, 1971. The lowest ever recorded in the lower 48 states was -56.5� C (-69.7� F) at Rogers Pass, in Lewis and Clark County, Montana., on Jan. 20, 1954. Even much warmer temperatures above -18� C (0� F) have often caused the deaths of people exposed to the cold for a few hours or less.

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Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

Tornado

Hurricane

Lightning and Thunder

Winds

Storm Surge

Calm Weather

Blizzard

Rain

Snow

Ice

Fires

Flood

Hail

Rainbow

Drought

Heat

Cold