OUR CALENDAR

Monday, July 11, 2011

THUNDERSTORMS

WEATHER WIZ KIDS is another great site that's helping us to answer our questions about weather.

Room 4 students think they know this about weather - 'thunder comes before lightning and clouds crashing together make thunder'.

Mrs Hunter has used Weather Wiz Kids as the main website to help her write an explanation about 'Thunderstorms'.

She hopes it helps you to understand how they work. Your job is to now draw a diagram the aids this explanation.

Thunderstorms

Wild weather of thunder and lightning, gusty winds and heavy rain is called a thunderstorm. Cumulonimbus clouds cause thunderstorms, but not by crashing together - crashing clouds are not the cause of thunderstorms.

Have you ever noticed that you see a flicker of lightning before you hear the sound of thunder? Lightning travels all the way from the cumulonimbus cloud to the ground and as it does a channel of air is formed. As the lightning bolt leaves the channel the air collapses back and a sound wave is created – that’s thunder.

What causes the lightning then? Frozen raindrops dance around inside the cumulonimbus cloud and as they bump into each other they create an electrical charge. Soon the cloud is full of electrical charges and when the charge gets too strong, lightning strikes.  The thunder and lightning actually happen at the same time, but the sound of thunder is slower than the speed of light.

Did you know that lightning kills and injures more people a year than hurricanes and tornadoes. If the thunder and lightning seem to happen at the same time, then the lightning is very close to you, and dangerous. Check out the weather forecast by visiting http://www.metservice.com/national/index to ensure you don’t caught out in that wet and wild, crazy weather of winter.

Check out Arizona's diagram below -


Good job Arizona. 

1 comment:

  1. I didnt know this, very interesting room 3

    ReplyDelete