Weather, Storms, Climate? Oh My!

Weather affects our lives in many ways; for example, the type of clothing that we wear any given day depends largely on the weather. If it is cold we put on slacks, if it is hot we slip on shorts. The United States has to deal with the wildest weather in the world. Other countries deal with weather, but the USA brings blizzards, +100Ð'oF heat and -35F cold, desert dryness, hurricanes and the world’s deadliest tornados. The weather also has a big impact on agriculture. Farmers need clear weather to plant and harvest their crops. Farmers’ plants require the right about of sunlight and rain to grow and ripen. A severe storm or frost can damage and kill many crops.

The main types of storms include thunderstorms, winter storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. A thunderstorm can be one of the most fascinating and one of the most dangerous aspects of the weather. Thunderstorms are the most common type of storm on the earth. “There are more than 50,000 thunderstorms that occur throughout the world each day”(Thunderstorm Climatology, N.D). A thunderstorm not only brings rain, thunder, and lightning, but it can also bring strong winds, hail, and maybe tornadoes. The activity in the clouds during a thunderstorm is very violent. “When lightning flashes, it heats the air around it. The air expands violently and creates the sound waves that are known as thunder”(Thunderstorm Climatology, N.D).

Lightning can travel in three different ways: inside a cloud, from cloud to cloud, or from cloud to ground. “A bolt of lightning heats the air to a temperature of 54,000Ð'oF!”( http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/.) Lightning tends to strike isolated objects. There is a way that a person can judge how far away he is from a lightning flash. “Count the number of seconds between the lightning flash and the sound of the thunder. Divide the number by five. This number is the amount of miles between you and the lightning. Throughout the course of one day there are more than forty million lightning strikes on the face of the earth”( Planet Geography p317). I feel a ball of lightning still remains one of the greatest mysteries of a thunderstorm.

Another thing that goes along with thunderstorms is floods. As long as the world is filled with water, there will always be flooding. Floods kill more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, or lightning. “In the 1990’s floods killed more than 110 people a year”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood). Floods are caused by rainfall that cannot be put anywhere; so rivers, streams, and lakes overflow creating a flood. Floods are very big in areas that are close to water.

A tornado is commonly produced by a spring storm. A tornado is a powerful twisting windstorm. The winds of a tornado are the most violent winds that occur on earth. “The winds of a tornado can reach more than 200 miles an hour. Ninety percent of all tornados reach several hundred yards in diameter”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm).