My Weather is Worse Than Yours Quiz

Answer: Stormy

Cumulonimbus clouds are tall storm clouds that produce rain and thunderstorms, or sometimes hail and tornadoes. They appear dark or black on the bottom as the sheer amount of water molecules in the cloud deflect most light coming from the Sun. Cumulonimbus clouds can normally be found along cold fronts.

Answer: The reflectivity of the snow

Albedo refers to the reflectivity of a substance at reflecting light. Have you ever walked outside one morning and had to cover your eyes due to the brightness? That's because the albedo of fresh snow is between 75-95% of radiation that hits it. This is compared to asphalt (5%-20%), concrete (10%-35%), and grass (15%-25%) that make up most of the surface in summer months.

Answer: Mongolia

A zud winter is a cold, harsh winter in Mongolia that results in the deaths of farm animals based on starvation, inability to graze, or the temperature alone. There are many different kinds of zuds, based on the amount of snowfall relative to the temperatures.

As a nation mostly built on livestock and agriculture, zuds can have a large impact on the economy and the food availability in Mongolia.

Answer: Bottle

Ball lightning is a not well-known phenomena, and is said to appear as a round lightning object that stays illuminated longer than a simple flash. Because of its rarity and unpredictability, little is known by scientists, and reports do not provide enough detail to study further.

Ribbon lightning is seen in storms where strong winds in one direction prevail. The gusts will blow each bolt in the direction of travel, forming a ribbon of lightning.

Rocket lightning not only sounds like a great rock band name, is a form of lightning that appears to shoot across the sky in a wave, unlike a bolt, at a single speed.

Answer: Hail

Graupel is a German term that explains water droplets that exist at temperatures below freezing, bonding with snowflakes during precipitation. This bonding forms a rime-like substance, or ice surface, that can cover between 2-5 centimeters of tree branches or the surface it lands on. Graupel is also fragile, usually shattering when touched.

Answer: Air Pressure

Barometers measure the weight of the air above a given point and can be used to predict short-term changes in weather. As wind moves from areas of high atmospheric pressure to areas of low atmospheric pressure, the increasing or decreasing change in pressure can determine how fast wind is moving. Furthermore, the movement of cold fronts, ahead of low pressure systems, can bring rainstorms.

Answer: Solid to Gas

Sublimation is the process of changing from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid. The most well-known examples of sublimation are dry ice, and snow. Snow and ice sublime at around freezing point. Other substances known to sublime include iodine, arsenic, and naphthalene. For the process ongoing in the question, evaporation would have been the correct word, the change of a liquid to a gas.

Answer: True

Microbursts are very strong downdrafts of air over a small-scale of land. The length can vary from seconds to a few minutes of influence, and the speed of the draft can be enough to flatten trees and cause problems for airplanes flying before the air. Wet microbursts include precipitation making it to the ground surface, while dry microbursts see their precipitation evaporate or sublimate before reaching the surface. Due to the brief and strong winds associated with microbursts, the damage left behind can cause confusion between itself and a tornado, and many tornado reports are seen to be microburst activity.

Answer: -89

-89.2°C (-128.6°F) was the calculated wind chill included temperature at Vostok in 1983, an Antarctic ice glacier which had not had a recorded temperature above -12°C (10°F) in the twentieth century. Wind chills are not measured statistics, but rather results from calculations. Wind chill calculations vary across the country, but are weighted on air temperature and wind velocity.

Answer: Polar Regions

A 2013 report from the NOAA reported the average global temperature had risen 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880, while Polar temperatures had risen around 2°C over that same time. Increasing temperatures at the poles can increase the melting of glaciers and ice cover, which has further effects on wildlife and populations, especially towards the North Pole.