The weather is a universal topic that can be interesting for anyone. As kids grow up, they learn about the weather and what it means to them. In this blog post, we will discuss some fun facts about the weather that you may not have learned in school!
A very common proverb that is somewhat true is, no one does anything about the weather though everyone discusses it. In fact, it is one of the most common topics that people speculate and talk about. Millions of people look over the internet to know about the local and global weather and also weather hazards.
Fun Weather Facts for Grade School Kids
All are curious about whether an umbrella is required today or whether this weekend’s big game is going to be spoiled by rain or not.
If you stay on the Earth, the weather is bound to affect you in diverse ways. The kind of house you stay in, the type of clothes you were, even the type of leisure activities and games you enjoy – all are determined by the weather.
If you aren’t going to stay on Earth, I would love to know where you are going, and how you plan to get there.
🙂
Weather influences the nature of the soil on which we live. Even plants and animals adapt to various living conditions due to weather variations. Depending on their surrounding weather, plants adapt to survive in extremely dry or wet conditions. The shapes of their branches also depend on the prevailing weather. Similarly, the animals also get acclimatized to endure the extremities of their natural habitat.
Even though we cannot ‘do’ much regarding the weather conditions, our meticulous study of the weather helps sharpen our ability to predict the approaching weather conditions. The ability to accurately foresee the oncoming adverse weather conditions help to reduce the loss to the farmers as they can modify their farming practices according to the predicted weather.
-Wind is the movement of air created by a weather system. This can be caused by thunderstorms, hurricanes, or tornadoes!
-Thunderstorms occur when cold air meets warm moist air from a rainstorm. These storms happen most often between July and September, or March through June during Eastern Standard Time.
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-Hurricanes occur in seas and oceans. This is when the warm moist air makes contact with cold dry air as it moves up across land into warmer regions of water. These can have winds of at least 74 miles per hour, and can last up to 12 hours!
-Tornadoes are caused by winds that are rotating counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. They usually happen during the late afternoon to evening, or from noon until night. They are a swirling wind with a fast rotation that forms over thunderstorms!
-Rain happens when warm air near the surface of Earth rises, cools, and carries water vapor with it. The moisture condenses into droplets when contact is made with a cold object (for example, raindrops on your window).
-Snow happens when the temperature is below freezing, and as water vapor condenses into droplets in the air that’s near 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Snowflakes are small ice crystals that fall from a cloud! An increase in snowfall can be anticipated during harsh winters as it helps keep the ground cool down.
Sunlight comes from the sun and is used to grow plants. It’s also what warms us up on a cold winter day! It takes about one hour for sunlight to reach Earth – but it can take up to four hours during some winter days. That’s because there’s less sunlight in the winter.
The weather is unpredictable and can change quickly, so it’s important to be prepared for anything that may come! If you’re going outside on a cold day, make sure to dress warmly – bundle up with layers of clothing like sweaters, coats, and hats!
I have some fun flash cards for you – as a printable download. Get them here: Weather Flash Cards
You can add your own facts or figures to the back of the cards too!
Deciding Upon A Weather Station To Suit Your Requirements
A weather station can also supply you some quiescent time to get other tasks completed or can allow you the opportunity to have a quiet cup of tea. The equipment that you will require are easily found at the garden store, crafts store, or hobby store.
After you get the hang of the tools you will be using you can even have a go at constructing your own electronic instrumentation.
What does it mean?
As you and your kids go about monitoring the readings that come from your equipment you may notice that the weather conditions outside change as the readings change.
If you are able to keep a chart of the readings make a note of what the weather is like from a visual perspective and what happened the next day. After a while you may notice that if a certain string of numbers show up, the weather is likely to change like before.
How weather works.
Before you start collecting all the tools and instrumentation for your backyard weather station it is a good idea to have some idea of how weather works. In this way you can gauge where and how to set-up and use the instruments while assessing what you may want to add to the station as the kids and adults learn.
Weather starts essentially with the sun and its heating rays. The heat hits the earth, heating its land and water masses. The earth and water warms causing air to rise. Depending upon how warm the land and water get the air rises faster causing wind as it meets previously warm air that is now cool and falling back to earth to be warmed again.
Across a land mass the process is uneven and the earth is spinning causing areas where there is high pressure and low pressure because the air is rising and falling at different rates with different elements mixed in with the air (water vapor.)
As the; earth turns, the ground and water heat, the air rises and falls picking up other stuff like water droplets/moisture and temperature changes high pressure regions and low pressure regions move across the globe causing fronts where changes happen between the two pressures.
Outside of knowing what to wear each day, what a weather station does is tell you whether a front is coming, here or going depending upon: temperature, water content, wind and direction.
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The instrumentation.
Ok, simplistic yes but that’s about it for how weather works. Now measuring where in the cycle your backyard happens to be can start. A thermometer placed in the shade will give you a good idea of the temperature. You can build one or pick up a decent one at the hardware store.
If building one you might want to check out a specific how to site on the topic but basically; buy a glass tube and one inch in diameter, fill it with mercury to 32 inches high and suck out all the air. Or, you can buy one as this is not a child’s task.
An anemometer will help you measure the wind speed. This device has four half ping-pong type balls on the end of sticks attached to one another in the shape of a cross. It also tends to have a weather vane attached to the top of it so that you can tell which way the wind is coming from.
The last two pieces of instrumentation you’ll need to pick up are a barometer and a rain gauge. The barometer tells you whether the air pressure is rising or falling. A rising barometer tells you fair weather is coming and a dropping pressure poor weather. The rain gauge is simply a 1 inch plastic tube with depth markings placed on the sides. It needs to be placed in an open place where wind is less likely to blow added rain into it.
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