How La Niña Affects the Weather

Many times, the weatherman will mention that our storms or lack of storms is because of La Niña or El Niño. These are weather patterns that can affect the weather around the world including the United States. Both La Niña and El Niño occur when there are certain changes in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Understanding these different weather patterns and looking back, weatherman can forecast possible severe weather, storms and droughts for the next year. This helps farmers and ranchers and everyone else anticipate how the next season might be.

The Amazing Facts About Cold Fronts

Cold fronts can cause amazing and drastic weather changes. When a cold front passes through your location, you can smell and feel the change. Sometimes a cold front will bring in a dust storm with high winds or even a blizzard with a temperature drop of 40 degrees. 

How to Know the Temperature by Counting Cricket Chirps

Morguefile.com

It is a warm summer evening and the crickets are out chirping all night long. By counting the number of cricket chirps you can actually figure out what the current temperature is. Learn how you can find out the current temperature just by counting cricket chirps using a simple formula.

What is El Niño and How it Affects the Weather

The weather is extreme in some places and beautiful in other places. Is it because of El Niño? What exactly is El Niño and what causes it?

Meteorologist use computer models and look for patterns to forecast the weather. There can be normal patterns and abnormal patterns. As meteorologists have learned more about these patterns, they found two distinct patterns in the Pacific Ocean. These are called El Niño and La Nina.

Why Chinook Winds Are Called The Snow Eater

A Chinook wind can be a nice warming wind bringing instant spring in the middle of winter or they can turn into a howling destructive windstorm. Chinook winds can raise temperatures by 25 to 35 degrees in minutes, melt a foot of snow, and destroy property, sandblast cars, and blow trucks off of the road

All About the Santa Ana Winds of Southern California

Santa Ana wind damage / Steve and Julie CC BY 2.0 Flickr

 Fall is the time of year usually for the Santa Ana winds of southern California. They are hot and dry winds that can cause record breaking high temperatures and wildfires. The Santa Ana winds blow from the hot dry deserts to the east of Los Angeles out towards the ocean.

How the Weather Affects Your Mood

The weather can have an affect on your health and how you feel. The rain, wind and lightning can make you feel bad or feel good. You might have heard the term, there is an ill wind blowing. That can actually be true with some types of wind. Rain also affects how you feel. It is about the ions in the air.  

Continue reading How Ions Affect Your Mood

The Interesting Facts about Lightning and Thunder

Lightning is beautiful and fascinating to watch and it is also very dangerous. One lightning strike carries tens of thousands of amps, hundreds of millions of volts releasing several billion joules of energy in less than a second.

How Beautiful Snowflakes Are Formed

Snowflake in a microscope / AlexeyKljatov Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Snowflakes can be big and heavy and they can be light and feathery. No two snowflakes look alike, but they all form the same way. Starting out as a tiny particle of dust in the atmosphere and turning into a beautiful snowflake. Find out how a dust particle turns into a pretty snowflake?