Transcript Slide 1

Weather on the Loose
What You Need to Know to
Survive a Midwest Summer
By Zach, Isabel, Madi & Morgan
Thunderstorms
by Zahala San Simone
www.authorsden.com
Onset of gray skies
Looks like rain today
My child just sighs
Pulls toys out for play
A whistle of wind
Then a bright flash of light
It’s starting, I think
Hope it’s done by tonight
My windows I close
But I leave cracked the door
I love the air’s scent
Before a downpour
Soon rain begins
Unrelenting and thick
Along with hail's chatter
Like a clock’s slow tick.
A huge clap of thunder
Rolls past my house
With companions of lightning
And wind all about
The storm raged for hours
As clouds changed to white
And again back to dark
One more show of might
And then it was over
Limbs strewn, all was wet
I opened my windows
And took in the scent
Of a clear, green land
Robust and well fed
Washed back to a virgin
Ready to be had.
A Thunderstorm Needs 3 Basic
Ingredients to Form:
 Moisture
 Rising unstable air
 A rising mechanism to provide a nudge
Thunderstorm Safety
 If a thunderstorm turns severe, go to the
basement or lowest level of your home
 Listen to the weather on the radio,
television or NOAA weather radio
 Watch what is happening outside
 Stay away from windows if strong winds
occur
THUNDER & LIGHTNING
 Lightning strikes 75 –
100 people in the US
each year
 The earth gets about
100 lightning strikes
per second
 Before Ben Franklin
came along, people
thought lightning was a
terrifying type of fire
THUNDER & LIGHTNING
 Lightning is the second biggest killer after
floods
 The kind of lightning we see most often is
cloud-to-ground lightning
 Lightning can flash within a cloud or
between several clouds
CAUSES OF LIGHNTING
 Lightning happens during thunderstorms
 Lightning happens when positive charges
meet negative charges
 The clouds bounce around together like
balloons and the charge that builds up is
attracted to an opposite charge on the
ground. The lightning strikes, following a
path between the cloud & the object on the
ground.
THUNDER
 Lightning super-heats the air to 18,000 degrees
Fahrenheit.
 The air expands, and that causes the noise we
know as thunder.
 The hot air from the lightning expands very fast
and it makes sound waves along the streak of
lightning – and that makes thunder.
 The sound waves reach you at different times.
 When the first one reaches your ears, there may
be a loud crash.
HOW FAR AWAY?
 When you see lightning, start counting “1
Mississippi, 2 Mississippi . . . “
 Stop when you hear the thunder.
 Divide your number by 5. That’s how many
miles away the lightning strike was.
HEAT LIGHTNING
 Heat lightning is lightning that is so far away
that you cannot hear the thunder.
 Heat lightning is mostly seen at night.
HAIL
 Nearly 5000 hailstorms happen in the US
every year.
 Most hailstorms occur during the summer.
 The biggest hailstone was 1.7 pounds! It
fell in Coffeyville, Kansas in 1970.
Causes of Hail
 Hail forms inside storm clouds.
 Hailstones are chunks of ice that are tossed
up and down in whirly winds of
thunderstorms.
 Every time a hailstone goes back up into the
cold cloud, another layer of ice is added to
it.
 Hailstones can be the size of a marble to
bigger than a baseball.
Hailstones
 If you break open a hailstone, it would look
like a cut onion with lots of layers.
Hail safety
 Hail can be very damaging to homes, cars
and even people.
 You can protect your car from hail by putting
it in a garage or shelter.
 You can protect yourself from hail by going
inside a house or building.