Weather Facts for Kids

Thunder is the sound made when lightning superheats the air to 30,000 Kelvin, causing it to expand explosively.

The centre of a hurricane, called the eye, is eerily calm and can have clear blue skies above it.

Monsoon rains provide water for crops that feed billions of people across Asia and Africa.

Frost can form on surfaces even without rain or clouds — water vapor in the air freezes directly onto cold surfaces.

Dust storms from the Sahara Desert can blow all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

Ball lightning is a rare glowing sphere that floats through the air during thunderstorms, and scientists still don't fully understand it.

The jet stream is a river of fast-moving air high in the atmosphere that can flow at over 200 miles per hour.

A drizzle drop is less than 0.5 millimetres across, while a large raindrop can be 5 millimetres — ten times bigger.

The eyewall, the ring of thunderstorms around a hurricane's eye, has the strongest winds and heaviest rain.

Earth has had at least five major ice ages, and they happen in cycles caused partly by changes in Earth's orbit.