The Sun

The sun causes all our weather because it heats the earth unevenly. The contrast between the hot parts and the cold parts of the earth turns our atmosphere into a powerful engine.

The engine keeps cold and warm air moving and makes changes in air pressure. Those air pressure changes cause wind. The heat of the sun also helps moisture to rise and form clouds, bringing rain, snow, or thunderstorms. So all the changes in our weather come, at least indirectly from the sun. For more on the summer sun, go here.

Blanket of Air

As the sun warms up the earth, the ground absorbs the heat, and reflects some of it back into the air. That's one reason why it's usually warmer near the ground and cooler on the higher hills and mountains. The atmosphere acts like a big blanket over the earth, holding in the warmth and reflecting it back to earth.

Snow

Snowflakes form when water vapor freezes into ice crystals in cold clouds. The ice crystals attract cooled water droplets to form various shapes. They get heavy and fall. If the air is cold enough, the snow falls all the way to the earth without melting. If the ground is freezing, the snowflakes stick to the ground.

No Two Alike?

Have you noticed that there are many different shapes of snowflakes? That is because a snowflake is usually made of many different kinds of snow crystals, and the shape of a snow crystal depends a lot on the temperature at which it forms. For example, at temperatures from 25 to 32 degrees F, the crystals are shaped like thin plates. At temperatures between 20 and 25 degrees F they look more like needles and at 15-20 degrees F they resemble hollow columns.   Usually the colder the temperature, the smaller the crystals.

As the crystals fall from the cold clouds, they bump into other crystals and freeze together, making even more shapes.   This is one reason why it's so hard to have two snowflakes exactly alike. In fact, in air right at the freezing mark, several snowflakes may stick together, forming large clumps of flakes that may melt as they hit the ground

Can it ever be too cold to snow?

As long as there is moisture in the air and a way for it to rise and form clouds, there can be snow, even in temperatures below zero. But very cold air doesn’t have much moisture in it, and it is also dense and heavy, so clouds don’t form unless the cold air rises up a mountainside or unless the cold air blows across a body of water and collects moisture. Most heavy snowfalls occur in temperatures 15 degrees Fahrenheit or above.

Weather Facts:

Almost every place in the United States has seen snow. Only the Florida Keys has remained flurry-free.

The most snow ever to fall in one winter was at Mount Baker in Washington State. In the winter of 1998-1999, 1, 140 inches fell, almost the height of the Statue of Liberty from head to toe.

Rochester New York is the snowiest large city in the United States, averaging 94 inches of snow every year.

More snow falls each year in southern Canada and the northern U.S. than at the North Pole!

Depending on air temperature, the same amount of moisture in one inch of rain could equal anywhere from two inches of wet slushy snow to as much as 40 inches of dry fluffy snow.

Cumulus: In Latin, this means "heap." Cumulus clouds look like a heap of cotton balls or whipped cream.

Stratus: It's Latin for "covering" or "blanket." Stratus clouds look like a flat blanket in the sky.

Cirrus: It's Latin for "curl." Cirrus clouds look like curls of white hair.

Rise Up

Clouds form when moisture rises, cools, and changes to water or ice. But what makes the moisture rise into the sky?

It can happen three ways:
1. Sunshine: the heat of the sun can cause the air to rise, taking water vapor with it high into the sky.

2. A Front: a cold front will bring cold air under warm air, forcing it to rise; a warm front will force warm moist air up over the cold air.

3. Mountains: When winds blow against mountains, the moist air is forced upward.

Fog: Inside a Cloud

Have you ever wondered what a cloud looks like from the inside? If you've ever been in thick fog, you know. Fog is a cloud at ground level. It can form on clear nights when there is a lot of moisture in the air.

A cloudless sky allows heat to escape up into space. Then the air near the ground cools enough for the moisture in the air to condense into a cloud.

Sometimes winds blow warm moist air over a cold surface such as water or ice, which causes the moisture to condense into fog.

When cool air moves over a warm lake or pond, moisture from the water's surface may evaporate and condense in the cool air. This results in what is called steam fog.

You guessed it! It looks like steam rising from the lake.

Clouds

You have only to look up into the sky to try your luck at weather forecasting. Clouds give us a clue about what is going on in our atmosphere and how the weather might change in the hours or even days to come. Each type of cloud forms in a different way, and each brings its own kind of weather.

Cool Condensation

Clouds are water.   As you probably know, we can find water in three forms: liquid, solid and gas. Water as a gas is called water vapor. Clouds form when water vapor turns back into liquid water droplets. That is called condensation. It happens in one of two ways: when the air cools enough, or when enough water vapor is added to the air. You’ve seen the first process happen on a summer day as drops of water gather on the outside of a glass of ice tea. That’s because the cold glass cools the air near it, causing the water vapor in the air to condense into liquid. Unlike the drops on the side of your glass though, the droplets of water in a cloud are so small that it takes about one million of them to form a single raindrop. Most clouds form this way, but the cooling comes not from ice in a glass, but as the air rises and cools high in the sky. Each tiny cloud droplet is light enough to float in the air, just as a little cloud floats out from your breath on a cold day.

Too Clean for Clouds?

Our air has to be just a little bit dirty for clouds to form. That’s because water vapor needs a surface on which to condense. Fortunately, even the cleanest air has some microscopic particles of dust, smoke or salt for water droplets to cling to, so the air is rarely too clean for clouds to form.

Cloud Classifications

Meteorologists name clouds by how high in the sky they form and by their appearance. Most clouds have two parts to their name. Usually the first part of the name has to do with the height and the second part refers to the appearance.

If clouds form at the highest levels, they get the prefix “cirro” as the first part of their name. Middle clouds get the prefix “alto.” Low clouds don’t get a prefix.

There are two cloud appearance types: cumulus and stratus, which are also the basic names of the low clouds. Sometimes they appear higher in the atmosphere and get a combination name with a prefix. For example, middle cumulus clouds are called “altocumulus” and high stratus clouds are “cirrostratus.” If a cloud produces rain or snow it gets either “nimbo” at the beginning or “nimbus” at the end.

Cumulus clouds are low individual billowy globs that are low, have flat bases and look a little like cauliflower. They are at least as tall as they are wide and form on sunny days from pockets of rising air. Their constantly changing outlines are fun to watch because they can take the shapes of almost anything, including animals and faces. Cumulus clouds usually signal fair weather. If they build into the middle or high part of the atmosphere they get the name cumulonimbus. A cumulonimbus cloud is tall, deep and dark and can bring lightning, heavy rain and even severe weather such as hail, damaging winds or tornadoes. It is a sign of rapidly rising and sinking air currents.    

Stratus clouds are layered and cover most of the sky.   They are much wider than they are tall.   If you see them in broken or puffy layers, they are stratocumulus clouds. If you see them in thin high layers that turn the sky solid white, they're cirrostratus clouds. The tiny prisms of ice in a cirrostratus layer can bend the sun's light. As a result, often you can see a halo or veil of rainbow colors around the sun. When stratus clouds are very thick, they become dark nimbostratus clouds, which can produce rain, drizzle or snow.

Cirrus clouds are high and thin and made entirely of ice crystals. Forming above 20,000 feet in the atmosphere, they often look like wisps of white hair. Cirrus clouds, which are a sign of warm moist air rising up over cold air, are sometimes an early signal that thickening clouds could bring light rain or snow within one or two days.     

Try to learn the names of the different clouds, and the next time you look up into the sky, take notice of what kind of clouds you see. And if you try, you might be able to guess what kind of weather they will bring.

Weather Fact: A few people have been struck by lightning and lived to tell about it. Park Ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning eight times! Most times he suffered minor burns, but once he lost his big toe, another time his eyebrows, and twice his hair caught fire.

Weather Fact: The biggest hailstone ever measured was 7 inches in diameter and 18.75 inches in circumference. It fell in a storm at Aurora, Nebraska, on June 22, 2003.

The previous record-holder as the largest hailstone had a diameter of 5.7 inches and a circumference of 17.5 inches, and was found in Coffeyville, Kansas, on September 3, 1970.

It still holds the record for the heaviest hailstone, weighing more than 1 1/2 pounds!

Terrifying Twisters

Some severe thunderstorms may produce tornadoes. These are violently rotating columns of air in contact with the Earth’s surface. The United States has more tornadoes than anywhere else on earth, with about one thousand occurring every year. The wind inside a tornado can reach speeds of more than 200 mph.

Government meteorologists may issue a tornado watch if they think thunderstorms could be severe enough to produce tornadoes.   

If someone reports a tornado, or if weather radar indicates a thunderstorm is strong enough to produce a tornado, local National Weather Service meteorologists issue a tornado warning.

If you hear a tornado warning, act quickly and get to a closet or hallway on the lowest floor of your home, away from outside walls and windows until the danger passes. It is best for your family to have an emergency plan before storms hit.

Ice from the Sky

Hail forms in strong thunderstorms.

These storms contain very strong updrafts, which are winds blowing up through the thunderstorms clouds. They can be as strong as one hundred miles per hour. Those strong updrafts suspend rain in mid-air with temperatures around the raindrop of below 32 degrees.

Those cold temperatures allow the rain to freeze into small hailstones. As more freezing raindrops get caught in the updraft, they collide with the hailstones, adding layer after layer of ice.

When hail becomes too heavy for the updrafts to keep it aloft, it falls to the ground. In strong updrafts, the hail has time to collect lots of ice, so the hail is bigger.

In weak updrafts, the hail doesn't have to get as big before it is able to fall to the ground. Sometimes the updrafts can be so strong that the hailstones can grow larger than softballs!

Rain So Heavy

Rainfall in a thunderstorm can be very heavy. Cumulonimbus clouds contain huge amounts of moisture. Several inches of rain can fall in a short time. That's why thunderstorms sometimes result in flooding.

Experiments:
1. How Far Away?
The next time you see lightning, count the seconds until you hear thunder. Since light travels faster than sound, the sound of thunder takes longer to get to you; about five seconds to travel one mile. If you count to five just before you hear the thunder, the lightning is about one mile away. If it is very close, the thunder will sound like a loud crack.

If the lightning is far away, it will sound more like a low rumble. If the lightning is more than fifteen miles away, you may not hear it at all.

2. Thunder Boomer
Blow up a small paper bag. Pop it. What happened? You made the air inside expand quickly, the same way air expands when heated by lightning. You made thunder!

Flash Facts:

* An estimated two thousand thunderstorms are going on in the world at any one time.

* The diameter of a lightning bolt is about a half-inch to an inch wide, but can be up to five inches wide. The average length of a lightning bolt from a cloud to the ground is three to four miles long.

* When lightning strikes a sandy beach, the intense heat turns a small portion of the sand into glass. These icicle-shaped pieces are called "fulgurites."

* A flash of lightning appears to flicker because there are usually several bolts of lightning striking at almost the same time.

* Lightning can occur not only in thunderstorms, but also in snowstorms, sand storms, above erupting volcanoes and from nuclear explosions.

Word Up:
Cumulonimbus: The name for a tall dark thunderstorm cloud comes from a combination of two Latin words, “cumulus,” meaning “heap,” and “nimbus,” which means “rainstorm.”

Anvil: This is what the top of a cumulonimbus cloud is called because it resembles an anvil that blacksmiths and metal workers use to hammer and bend metal.

Indoor Lightning Safety

Lightning injuries are rare indoors, but to be safe, remember these indoor lightning rules:

Don't talk on a corded telephone, don't take a bath or shower, and don't use electrical appliances. If lightning strikes outside phone lines, electrical wires or pipes, the electrical current can travel indoors.

Don't watch lightning from an open door or window. It's almost as dangerous as staying outside.

Where does lightning strike people?

The top five states for lightning injuries are Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New York. Wyoming, New Mexico, Arkansas and Colorado also have a high number of injuries. While you would expect a lot of lightning injuries in thunderstorm-prone Florida, the high number of injuries in the more northern states, where lightning is less frequent, may be partly due to people not taking adequate precautions.

Lightning and Thunder continued

A Deadly Danger

When it comes to deadly weather, tornadoes and hurricanes get all the publicity, but lightning is actually the worst threat, killing more people on average every year than tornadoes and hurricanes combined.

About one hundred people die from lightning every year in the United States, and hundreds more suffer lifelong injury or disability. In fact, the National Weather Service calculates a one-in-three hundred chance that you or a family member will be struck by lightning sometime during your lifetime.

You can beat the odds fairly easily, though. The simplest way is to get inside a home or other sturdy building during a thunderstorm. Do it immediately; don't wait for the rain to fall.   

Most lightning injuries occur before the rain starts and after it stops.   Remember, if you hear thunder, lightning is close enough to strike you.

The "30-30 Rule"

A good plan to follow is the "30-30 Rule." It works this way: if the time between seeing lightning and hearing thunder is less than thirty seconds, you are in danger of being struck. Go inside.   After the storm is over, wait thirty minutes after the last flash of lightning or boom of thunder before going back outside.

But be careful! Even the "30-30 Rule" cannot protect against the first lightning strike, so always know the weather forecast, and watch the sky for possible developing thunderstorms.   Sports coaches, golfers, scout leaders and campers should have a good lightning safety plan and use it when thunderstorms threaten.

Where to Go?

If you are caught outside during a thunderstorm with no buildings nearby, you should avoid open fields, beaches, lakes and swimming pools as if you life depends on it, because it does. Lightning often strikes the tallest object around, and you don't want that object to be you.

That's also why isolated trees, picnic shelters and covered bus stops offer no protection, and may actually increase your chances of being struck. If no other shelter is nearby, get into a car with metal sides and roof, and roll the windows up.

Nowhere to Hide?

If no building or car is available and you must stay outside during the thunderstorm, find shelter in a dense woods or thick grove of small trees. If you are trapped in an open space, get as low as you can in a valley or ravine and crouch down. Stay away from metal fences, flag poles and lamp posts.

If lightning is about to strike near you, it might give a brief warning. Your hair may stand on end, your skin may tingle, you might hear a crackling sound, and keys or other metal objects may vibrate.

If this happens to your group or sports team, spread out twenty feet or more apart and squat down with your head and feet together, your head tucked and your ears covered. (It's going to be loud!) After the lightning flashes, keep moving to a safer place. With some pre-planning and by following some simple rules, you can avoid the danger of nature's light show and enjoy its beauty instead.

Thunder and Lightning

Have you ever seen tall, dark puffy clouds forming on a hot humid afternoon? These are called cumulonimbus clouds, sometimes nicknamed "thunderheads." They can actually form any time of day when the temperature falls rapidly higher up in the sky.

These tall dark clouds are full of moisture and contain strong up and down air currents. Cumulonimbus clouds may tower more than 50,000 feet, and cover from just a few square miles up to two hundred square miles.

What is Lightning?

To put it simply, lightning is electricity. It forms in the strong up-and-down air currents inside tall dark cumulonimbus clouds as water droplets, hail, and ice crystals collide with one another.

Scientists believe that these collisions build up charges of electricity in a cloud. The positive and negative electrical charges in the cloud separate from one another, the negative charges dropping to the lower part of the cloud and the positive charges staying ins the middle and upper parts.

Positive electrical charges also build upon the ground below. When the difference in the charges becomes large enough, a flow of electricity moves from the cloud down to the ground or from one part of the cloud to another, or from one cloud to another cloud. In typical lightning these are down-flowing negative charges, and when the positive charges on the ground leap upward to meet them, the jagged downward path of the negative charges suddenly lights up with a brilliant flash of light.

Because of this, our eyes fool us into thinking that the lightning bolt shoots down from the cloud, when in fact the lightning travels up from the ground. In some cases, positive charges come to the ground from severe thunderstorms or from the anvil at the very top of a thunderstorm cloud. The whole process takes less than a millionth of a second.    

Kinds of Lightning

There are words to describe different kinds of lightning. Here are some of them:

In-Cloud Lightning: The most common type, it travels between positive and negative charge centers within the thunderstorm.

Cloud-to-Ground Lightning: This is lightning that reaches from a thunderstorm cloud to the ground.

Cloud-to-Cloud Lightning: A rare event, it is lightning that travels from one cloud to another.

Sheet Lightning: This is lightning within a cloud that lights up the cloud like a sheet of light.

Ribbon Lightning: This is when a cloud-to-ground flash is blown sideways by the wind, making it appear as two identical bolts side by side.

Bead Lightning: Also called "chain lightning," this is when the lightning bolt appears to be broken into fragments because of varying brightness or because parts of the bolt are covered by clouds.

Ball Lightning: Rarely seen, this is lightning in the form of a grapefruit-sized ball, which lasts only a few seconds.

Bolt from the blue: A lightning bolt from a distant thunderstorm, seeming to come out of the clear blue sky, but really from the top or edge of a thunderstorm a few miles away.


What Puts the Thunder in the Thunderstorm?   

Lightning bolts are extremely hot, with temperatures of 30,000 to 50,000 degrees F. That's hotter than the surface of the sun! When the bolt suddenly heats the air around it to such an extreme, the air instantly expands, sending out a vibration or shock wave we hear as an explosion of sound. This is thunder. If you are near the stroke of lightning you’ll hear thunder as one sharp crack. When lightning is far away, thunder sounds more like a low rumble as the sound waves reflect and echo off hillsides, buildings and trees. Depending on wind direction and temperature, you may hear thunder for up to fifteen or twenty miles.

Lightening Facts

On a yearly basis, the earth hosts over 16 million storms and 3 billion lightning strikes. The United States experiences approximately 100,000 thunderstorms with 20 million lightning strikes annually.

Lightning can heat up to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 5 times the temperature of the sun).

Lightning carries 1 billion volts and 10,000 to 20,000 amperes of current.

Lightning can travel 25 to 45 miles horizontally prior to turning downward to the ground.

A flash can be six to eight miles long.

The thickness is that of a quarter to a half dollar, though the surrounding light makes it seem much larger.

The ground surface can be lethal up to a 60-foot radius at the time of the strike. If the strike occurs in water, that increases to 600 feet radius.

Striking Lightning Facts

Lightning is essentially a gigantic electrical spark that results from billions of volts of natural static electricity.

Lightning is usually associated with thunderstorms and rain. Most meteorologists will agree that ice formation in clouds is a key factor for starting the "electric generator" that produces lightning.

There are several theories as to how lightning is produced. It seems the best one so far [called the "Charge Reversal Concept"] requires that falling graupel (small ice pellets) become negatively charged while small supercooled cloud droplets that strike then bounce off the graupel become positively charged.

Cloud temperature can affect the "charge sign" of the graupel. If the temperature is below -10C then the graupel takes a negative charge and the supercooled cloud droplets take a positive charge.

The supercooled cloud droplets rise on updrafts to the top of the storm while the graupel pellets fall and melt in the lower regions of the storm.

Lightning Safety Facts from NOAA.


Each second there are 50 to 100 Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Strikes to the Earth world-wide.

Most lightning strikes average 2 to 3 miles long and carry a current of 10000 Amps at 100 million Volts.

A "Positive Giant" is a lightning strike that hits the ground up to 20 miles away from the storm.Because it seems to strike from a clear sky it is known as "A Bolt From The Blue". These"Positive Giant" flashes strike between the storm's top "anvil" and the Earth and carry several times the destructive energy of a "regular" lightning strike.

Thunder can only be heard about 12 miles away under good quiet outdoor conditions.

Daytime lightning is difficult or impossible to see under local sun and/or hazy conditions. Night-time "heat lightning" can be seen up to 100 miles away (depending on "seeing" conditions).

"Lightning Crawlers" or "Spider Lightning" can travel over 35 miles as it "crawls" across the bottoms or through squall line "frontal" clouds. This rare type of lightning is very beautiful as itzaps from "horizon-to-horizon". However it can turn deadly if it happens to strike the ground at the end of its super long path!

{Lightning Crawlers from The Blue!}

Radar has detected Lightning "Crawlers" traveling at high altitudes (15000 ft to 20000 ft) as they zap from cloud-to-cloud.

Lightning "Crawlers" over seventy five (75) miles long have been observed by Radar!

The temperature of a typical lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the Sun!

How big around is a typical lightning bolt? Answer: About the size of a Quarter to Half-Dollar!

Lightning looks so much wider than it really is just because its light is so bright!

Lightning Strikes create powerful radio waves in the frequency range of 3 KHz (audio, VLF) through 10 MHz (shortwave radio). The VLF (3000 Hz to 30000 Hz) "lightning signatures" can travel around the world, allowing monitoring of world-wide lightning. The shortwave "lightning signatures can travel half-way around the Earth (the night-time side of the Earth).

The best region to listen for distant shortwave lightning signatures is from 2 MHz through 7 MHz. After 3 AM local time you can listen to 3 MHz and hear the beautiful dispersion-ringing of the static as it bounces back-and-forth between the earth and ionosphere. It can at times sound like hundreds of tiny bells ringing at once!

Red Sprite lightning is a newly-discovered type of lightning that zaps between the 40 mile span between the tops of severe storm clouds to the lower ionosphere "D" layer. Red Sprite Lightning looks like a giant "blood-red"-colored jellyfish having light-blue tentacles. Red Sprite Lightning creates extremely powerful radio emissions from 1000 Hz through VHF.

**sensational** said:

unko....ok

aaj tak mujhe tumne 'aap' nahi bola

He's been popping Skittles again!

Mujrim said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

Mujrim said:

jahan aap le jao

aisi jagah jahan koi hum donno ko tang na karein

Mey Ashii koh pehj dhun ghi, don't worry!

nai nai nai
Ashii jee ko nai

Lol, kyun nai?
Itnay daar geyeh hoh aap, kiya?

You have all the time in the world missy!!

(I think!)

**sensational** said:

yeh man ur ryt there hehehehe

aur howz things?

so u beating me in posts then hena?

Lol, things are aite, nothing special.

Lol, you noticed that, huh?
I didn't think we were competing, lol.

**sensational** said:

lol
there nolt to do man
its all just work work and work
no mazaa in life.....well yet
hehehe
yeh things cud be betta here...alota shyt hapnin around and that! hope it gets sorted!

Life, eh?
Lol, don't get me wrong I am thankful, it's just it would be nice if some things in life weren't so complicated, ah well if that was the case then life wouldn't be so interesting? Ah, can't win, lol.

Hopefully Inshah'Allah, thing's will start looking up.

Fat Joe - Lean Back.

You know it's true!

**sensational** said:

am fine hun

apni sunahhhh

how u?

how things?
wetha abit shyt!

I'm OK sweets, just alil sleepy, lol.

Things are OK, they could be better though.
And yeah, the weather sucks here too!

It'll be Dr Pepper tomorrow!

**sensational** said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

Lol, I'm high on sugar!

lol joka
nothing new there then

Lol, shhhhhhh!!

Lol, how're you, young lady?

Angola.

Yes, are you going to watch TV today?

Aap laddoo ki tarha mithi hain.

Lol, isn't it obvious?
The internet silly!

And thanks.

~CHANDNI~ said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

Yeh billa chale gah?

chla   lay   dekhao


but   khayn diyada hi chalo to nahi

Lol, haha!!
Chalo jab woh nakhray dikhaiyeh ghi, yeh billa usse sudharay gah!!