By AccuWeather senior meteorologist
Updated Dec. 13, 2020 9:55 AM
After a fun couple of months of Summer Camp, AccuWeather School is back in session with more engaging and educational virtual lessons to help kids and interested adults learn more about the weather – and have fun doing so!
🎨 Dec. 11 - Art Class: Volcanoes can make glass?? (It’s true!)
Before you go searching online to buy a glass mug made out of volcanic glass, know that the amount of glass that is produced is very small – but it shows the power of volcanoes.
It’s actually the lava from volcanoes that makes tiny glass particles – and the volcano has to be near an ocean. When the lava hits the ocean, a dense white steam known as laze forms.
The steam from a boiling pot of water isn’t too dangerous as long as you don’t put your face right near the hot pot. However, the laze steam is made up of hot water vapor, toxic gases and tiny shards of volcanic glass – known as Pele's Seaweed.
Instead of being able to pick up the glass and make a mug out of it, people who are too close to the laze can develop breathing issues. Also, the laze may bother their eyes or skin – definitely something to stay away from!
The Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) volcano sends up powerful clouds of hot gasses, rocks, and lava as a fishing boat is moored offshore on Nov. 8, 2007. (AP Photo/Ed Wray)
🎓 Dec. 11 - AP class: Can heavy rain extinguish a volcano’s lava?
We all know that water is the best way to fight a fire, so when a volcano is spewing lava, it’s a good thing when heavy rain is in the forecast, right? Heavy rain will extinguish a wildfire but is no match for molten rock.
Our friends from the U.S. Geological Survey said that the temperature of lava can get as high as about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius) – talk about hot! Remember that the boiling point of water is 212 F (100 C), so you can imagine how rain will simply evaporate instantly when it pours down on the lava.
Attempting to put out lava with rain would work as well as firefighters using a squirt gun to put out a house fire, Meteorologist Jim Andrews who also studies volcanoes said. In fact, Jim said that it would take heavy rainfall that is basically unheard of to douse lava.
Lava moves across the ground as a pahoehoe flow, Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii. (Photo/Griggs J.D./USGS)
After this volcano lesson, check out this cool “erupting volcano” that AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls created at home:
We are not going to say what chemical Jason used in the above video since it is toxic and explosive, and we don’t want anyone to get hurt. We do have instructions for you to make a safer volcano at home.
🎨 Dec. 8: Art Class: Design your own sun at home
It’s time to show off your artistic skills at AccuWeather School and create a sun at home with a few simple supplies!
Before we start this activity, you will want to grab the following: shaving cream, food coloring, wax paper, white construction paper, newspaper, a toothpick and something with a sharp edge (such as a piece of a cardboard box).
Now that you have your own sun to bright up your room, let’s learn about some facts about the sun shining down on all of us from our friends at NASA:
The sun is 109.2 times larger than Earth
Talk about hot – the sun’s core is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius)!
No rush to bake a birthday cake! The sun is about 4.5 billion years old, and it takes 230 million Earth years for the sun to orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
It’s big, but not that big – the sun is actually a yellow dwarf star, meaning there are many other bigger types of stars in space.
Special thanks to NASA for the instructions behind today’s fun activity.
⭐️ Dec. 8: Astronomy class: Sun’s journey in the sky lesson from one lazy cat
How can a cat help us learn about the sun? Cats and other animals sit in the sun and soak up the warmth. Cold-blooded reptiles, such as snakes, need the sun to warm up their bodies. Cats are warm-blooded, like us humans, and enjoy napping in the sun, much like you would with an extra blanket wrapped around you.
Have you ever seen your cat move with the patch of sun as the sun seems to travel from the eastern part of the sky to the west during the day? Play close attention from one month to the next and you will see that your cat will never be in the same spot – all because of the tilt of the Earth and its journey around the sun.
📝 Dec. 4. - Pop quiz! How much of the ocean actually freezes?
Most people, when standing along the ocean with snow covering the sand, will see that the waves will keep crashing onto the beach. You may think that the air is cold enough for the ocean to freeze, but why doesn’t it? One of the main reasons is why you don’t drink seawater – it’s very salty!
At what temperature does water freeze? If you said, "32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Celsius," you get a gold star! In the ocean, there is enough salt to drop the temperature at which the ocean will freeze down to 28.4 F, or 2 below zero C. At the beaches most of us visit, the air doesn’t get that cold long enough for the ocean to freeze – and the never-ending waves also keep the ocean from freezing as fast as lakes and ponds near your home.
The ocean will freeze if the air is cold enough. At least 15 percent of the ocean on Earth will freeze at some point in the year, our friends at NOAA said.
📚 Dec. 4 - Study Hall: How blubber helps animals stay warm in the cold ocean
Seals, walruses and whales live in the icy cold waters of the Arctic Ocean and around Antarctica, but how do they stay warm and not freeze to death? If you said blubber, you get a gold star! Blubber is the layer of fat right below the skin of these animals that keeps them warm.
How much of a difference does blubber make? Let’s grab some shortening from our kitchen cabinets to find out:
Imagine the shortening Krissy used in the video above is the blubber under the skin of a seal, walrus or any other marine mammal – that’s why her one hand didn’t get as cold as the other!
Did you know that blubber does more than keep marine mammals warm? According to our friends at National Geographic, who had the idea for the activity Krissy demonstrated, blubber also helps to keep these animals afloat and is where they store energy, so these animals don’t have to spend as much time looking for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day!
🔬 Dec. 1 - Invention Station: Rip apart a soda can like a piece of paper
You don’t need amazing muscle strength to rip a soda can in half like it’s a piece of paper – just a little help from one element on the periodic table, Gallium:
Gallium is the metal that AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls melted in his hand recently at AccuWeather School. You can hold Gallium in your hand, but it attacks many other metals such as aluminum and steel and makes them very brittle.
If you try this activity at home since Gallium is non-toxic, be sure to wear gloves when ripping the can apart. Gallium may be the muscles behind this experiment, but the can may still be sharp!
🍎 Dec. 1 - Snack Time! Tasty treat helps understand freezing rain, sleet
It’s winter! Wait a minute, your calendar says that the first day of winter isn’t until Dec. 21. That’s astronomical winter. Meteorological winter starts on Dec. 1 in the Northern Hemisphere, so let’s learn more about winter weather.
When you hear that ice is in the forecast, what comes to mind? A glaze of ice that coats everything and makes it really difficult to walk or drive? That’s freezing rain. However, sleet is also a form of icy weather. When sleet is falling, you will see ice pellets making roads and sidewalks slippery.
So how does each form? A tasty treat is going to help us with this lesson:
One important lesson is that sleet is not hail. Both are balls of ice – but sleet happens in the winter and hail is more common in the summer. Hail forms as it takes a ferris wheel ride up and down in a thunderstorm cloud – growing bigger and bigger with each loop. Sleet will only be one size as it is a frozen raindrop.
🎓 Nov. 24 - AP class: Bugs walking on water isn’t a superhero power
Have you ever seen small bugs walk or skim along the surface of a lake or slow-moving river? If you tried that, you would soak your foot! These bugs don’t have a superhero power but are using a science trick. Let’s find out what that trick is as we watch some bugs walk on water:
Surface tension is the reason that a carefully placed needle or paperclip can float at the top of a cup, bubbles are round and how some tents keep water out.
For that last point, our friends at the USGS said that if water gets into your tent, you may be to blame. The surface tension will bring the pores of the tent material to keep the rain out, until you touch the tent and break the surface tension – causing the rain to seep in!
Want to see another example of surface tension? Check out how water seems to defy gravity (thanks to surface tension) in this experiment from AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls:
🏕️ Nov. 24 - Excursion Day: Unique tree shows us that ‘nature finds a way’
If a tornado or windstorm downs trees in a community, people work together to clean up the damage and usually plant more trees. What happens in a forest after a tornado or damaging winds strike and no one plants trees to replace those that were lost? Check out one neat sight that shows us how “nature finds a way”:
The above tree was at the same state park in Pennsylvania where we took an excursion to see Little Bubbler.
We’ve seen other examples of “nature finding a way” during previous lessons. Remember the trees that were hanging on for dear life to avoid falling into Lake Erie and how there is a super generation of monarch butterflies.
Can you think of another example? If so, send us your response through Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #AccuWeatherSchool and we may explore it later this year!
🔎 Nov. 20 - Weather Detectives! No air needed to blow up this balloon
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls is back with another fun science experiment – blow up a balloon without taking a breath of air or using a tank of helium!
You must have an adult help you with this experiment since using too much and too high of a concentration of bleach and hydrogen peroxide makes for a dangerous combination.
Only add a few tablespoons of bleach to the water bottle (and don’t drink out of the bottle!) and a couple of tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to add to the balloon.
We talked about weather balloons earlier at AccuWeather School, so it is only fitting to watch the above video. For weather balloons, meteorologists fill them up with hydrogen or helium before releasing them to soar high in the sky.
One important lesson on weather balloons is that the balloons are not what gathers the data for meteorologists – that’s done by a box that is attached to the balloon. Big word time – these boxes are called either radiosondes or rawinsondes.
⛹️♂️ Nov. 20 - Gym class: Why meteorologists launch balloons everyday
Here’s one awesome job meteorologists get to do – launch balloons in the sky at least twice a day! They not only have fun doing so, but weather balloons play an important part in creating the forecast that you see on your AccuWeather app:
Weather balloons are released by meteorologists all across the world every 12 hours at the exact same time – at 7 a.m. EST and 7 p.m. EST. When there is a hurricane or major snowstorm threatening or another big weather event, balloons are launched even more often to improve the forecasting tools used by meteorologists.
It doesn’t matter what type of extreme weather is unfolding, the balloons will be sent up high in the sky – check out these videos of meteorologists launching a balloon in a blizzard and during strong tropical winds!
Thumbnail image courtesy of AccuWeather Meteorologist Renee Duff.
🔬 Nov. 17 - Weather Lab: Jack-in-the-Box, science-style
Make your friends or siblings jump with this science version of a Jack-in-the-Box that you can make at home with only a can of soda and a marker:
How did AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls get the can to open without lifting the tab?
As you apply pressure to the edge of the can that you are rubbing with the marker, it weakens the metal at an already weak point on the can. After some time, the weakened tab can’t hold back the air pressure inside the can, and it pops open – much like a Jack-in-the-Box!
Changing air pressure leads to the different weather that we experience day-to-day. High pressure usually leads to dry and sunny days, while you may need your umbrella or snow boots when low pressure is moving through your community.
🎨 Nov. 17 - Art Class: Why mountains have rainy, dry sides
Pop-quiz time! Look at the rainfall map below for Oregon and surrounding states. Can you pick out where the mountains and valleys are?
If you said that the mountains are located where the heaviest rain fell (shown by the yellow and red colors), you get a gold star!
Check out western Oregon, it is easy to see where Willamette Valley is – it’s found in between the two red areas. Now, look at the top part of the image and see how 3-6 inches of rain poured down over the mountains in western Washington, but less than 0.10 of an inch on the other side of the mountains in central Washington!
The huge difference you see in rainfall totals between one side of mountains to the other happens frequently all over the world – the reason is the size of the mountains and wind direction. Let’s grab Play-Doh to understand this better:
Want to talk like a meteorologist? When air rises up a mountain, that is called an upslope flow. When air flows down the other side of the mountains, it’s called (you guessed it!) downslope flow.
🏕️ Nov. 13 - Field Trip Day: Watch water bubble right up from the ground
Where does the water come from that fills streams, rivers and lakes? From rain, right? That is correct, but you get extra credit if you said that some water comes up from the ground through springs.
AccuWeather School is taking a field trip to see one unique spring called Little Bubbler at Raymond B. Winter State Park in central Pennsylvania:
The water coming out of Little Bubbler is quite chilly, but there are springs across the Earth that create a natural hot tub.
These thermal springs form as the groundwater is heated by rocks far down below the land we are all standing on. Many thermal springs are found where there has been recent volcanic activity, but that is not always the case. Rocks become warmer the farther down you go in the Earth, the U.S. Geological Survey explains, and can lead to a thermal spring.
Some thermal springs are comfortable enough for people to take a dip in, like a swimming pool or a hot tub – one such spring in Greenland allows people to take a soak in the water as icebergs float by!
Happy Greenlanders and tourists enjoy the unique experience of dipping in the hot springs while enjoying drifting icebergs floating by on Uunartoq Island at the far southern tip of Greenland. These hot springs provide visitors with a perfect bath temperatures of about 100°F. (USGS)
🪐 Nov. 10 - Space Exploration: Sizing up the sun, Earth, moon at home
When thinking about how the sun looks in the sky (and remember to never look directly at it!), it is hard to imagine how big the sun really is. Let’s take a walk around our homes to size up the sun and moon compared to Earth:
Now that we know how large the sun really is, it makes sense that the storms on the sun are also monsters compared to the hurricanes and bomb cyclones on Earth.
Check out the photo below of plasma (a hot gas that is a mix of electrically charged hydrogen and helium – yup, the same helium used in balloons here on Earth!) erupting from the sun’s surface. Look at how big it is compared to Earth!
A close-up of an erupting prominence with Earth inset at the approximate scale of the image. Taken on July 1, 2002. (ESA&NASA/SOHO)
Solar storms from the sun are so massive that they can cause pretty Northern and Southern Lights here on Earth and disrupt radio communications. In March 1989, one solar storm was strong enough that it knocked out power to the entire Canadian province of Quebec!
🔬 Nov. 6 - Weather Lab: Melt metal in your hand
Melt metal in your hand? Do you think that is only possible if you are a superhero? Actually, there is a metal that will turn to liquid after sitting in your hand for some time – no special powers required!
The metal that AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls melted in his hand was Gallium. Pop-quiz time: What number is this element on the periodic table?
If you said 31, you get a gold star. You get a double gold star if you know that this non-toxic metal melts at just 85.58 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). It’s no surprise that your ice cream cone or ice cubes will melt when it is that warm, but a metal turning into liquid when the temperature is not even 90 F (32 C) – that’s about as rare as a mailbox melting on a sweltering summer day.
⚡ Nov. 6 - Shocking Truth: Why are the tops of thunderstorms flat?
The next time you see a thunderstorm in the distance, look closely at the top of the cloud. If it’s a really big thunderstorm, you will notice that the top is flat.
How does a cumulus cloud that looks like cotton balls grow into a cumulonimbus cloud that has a flat top? The answer lies in how high the cloud towers up in the sky:
The flat tops of thunderstorms are called anvil clouds. Look at the photo below, that’s an anvil.
Credit NASA/ESA.
See the part of the cloud that's poking up through the top. That’s called an overshooting top – think of that as a rocket shooting up into space. Gravity should keep the rocket on the ground, but the rocket has the energy to get into space.
When there is an overshooting top, that means the thunderstorm is really strong and can rise into the stratosphere where clouds typically shouldn’t be found.
📝 Nov. 3 - Pop quiz!: Outer space is how far away??
Think about the last time when you’ve watched a rocket launch – how far did the spacecraft fly until it left Earth’s atmosphere?
Here’s a hint – wispy cirrus clouds can be as high as 45,000 feet (8.5 miles/13.7 kilometers) above our heads, and that’s nowhere near the edge of outer space!
Astronauts typically fly to the International Space Station, which is around 250 miles (402 km) above the Earth’s surface, but to leave the upper extent of the atmosphere, they must travel 6,200 miles (10,000 km). That’s about the same distance from Washington, D.C., to the southern tip of South America – think about that the next time you gaze up at the stars.
We know that clouds are in between us and outer space, but what else fills those 6,200 miles? Let’s find out:
The exosphere is the last layer of Earth’s atmosphere, and that gradually gives way to outer space.
One thing to think about – if the Earth’s atmosphere is just gas, why doesn’t it escape out into space? The same answer is why you don’t float here on Earth like the astronauts do on space shuttles – gravity.
🎨 Nov. 3 - Art Class: Create a stained-glass rainbow
Rainbows are one of the prettiest sights in the sky, and now you can make a stained-glass rainbow to hang around your house!
For this activity, you will need: tissue paper that spans the colors of the rainbow, glue, unwaxed paper plates, scissors, wax paper, Q-tips, piece of plain paper, pencil and a hole punch. Two paperweights, books and a small bowl of water will also help us with this activity:
When you are making your rainbow, don’t forget that red is always on the outside of the arc. Red is followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (you know the phrase “Roy G. Biv”). What if you were adding a double rainbow to your artwork? You would have to flip the order of the colors!
When sunlight takes two bounces on a trampoline inside the water droplet (the big word for that is refracted), the result is a faded, double rainbow with the color pattern flipped.
Thanks to NASA for the idea behind this art activity!
🍎 Oct. 30 - Snack Time: Learn about the moon phases with cookies!
Can you look up in the sky and tell the difference between a waning gibbous, waxing crescent or a third quarter moon? Here’s a fun and tasty activity to learn the different phases of the moon using cookies!
Thanks to NASA for the idea for this activity. How many cookies did you eat when you were creating the phases of the moon?
In the video above, Krissy used the cookies to make a ”ring of fire” solar eclipse. If we wanted to create a lunar eclipse doing this activity, we would need cookies with red or orange cream inside since the moon turns a rusty orange or dark red during a total lunar eclipse.
A rare celestial occurrence as a 'Super Blue Blood Moon' is seen at Santa Monica Beach in Santa Monica, Calf., Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
🔎 Oct. 30 - Weather Detectives! Case of the disappearing Halloween candy
We aren’t talking about how quickly you can eat the candy you amass this Halloween! If you have some extra treats left over when your stomach is filled (or if parents want an excuse to reduce kids’ Halloween candy stash), drop any sugar-coated candy in hot water and watch what happens:
The sugar disappeared right before your eyes! The hotter the water, the faster the sugar will dissolve.
This demonstrates a principle about how warmer water can affect the weather: The warmer the water is means that there is more “fuel” in the ocean for hurricanes and in the Great Lakes for lake-effect snow.
📚 Oct. 27 - Study Hall: Why are city alleyways so windy?
If you live in or have visited a city, you probably have felt a gust of wind when you passed by an alleyway between two big buildings. Why does that happen? Let’s grab some building blocks to find out:
So when the air gets squeezed between two buildings, it speeds up and anyone walking past the alleyway will feel that gust of wind.
The next time it is windy around your house, take a look at the weather map and see if there is an H (high pressure) and L (low pressure) not far from one another. Much like what happens between two buildings, it turns windier as the air gets squeezed between these two weather features. The stronger the H and L systems on the weather map are, the faster the wind will blow.
🔬 Oct. 27 - Weather Lab: Make hand sanitizer dance?
All of us have been using hand sanitizer a lot more recently. While it works to keep us healthy, you can wow your friends with this neat trick:
How did AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls get the hand sanitizer to dance? The key is that hand sanitizer is mostly alcohol (and something you definitely don’t want to drink). Alcohol is less dense than water, meaning the alcohol will float and skim along the top of the water.
How does that relate to the weather? It demonstrates how warm and cold air can interact. Warm air is less dense than cold air. The denser cold air is basically the boss of the weather – it can push warm air up and out of the way, leading to rain, snow and thunderstorms.
⛹️♂️ Oct. 23 - Gym class: Make elephant toothpaste to learn about science!
We aren’t really making elephant toothpaste, but what AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls creates in this experiment looks like a tube of toothpaste big enough for an elephant!
For this experiment, you will need a water bottle, ½ cup of six-percent hydrogen peroxide, 1 tablespoons of dry yeast, 3 tablespoons of warm water, 1 tablespoon of dish soap and food coloring.
How does the elephant toothpaste form? The yeast causes the hydrogen peroxide to break down into oxygen and water. It doesn’t take a lot of hydrogen peroxide to generate a bunch of oxygen, which starts to rush out of the water bottle. The problem is that the soapy water traps the oxygen. That leads to bubbles and then the foam (or our elephant toothpaste!).
🔬 Oct. 23 - Invention Station: Create your own wind vane
Last spring during AccuWeather School, we learned how to make a windsock – that wasn’t a sock to keep your feet warm from chilly winds. A windsock can tell you how strong winds are blowing and from which direction.
So what is the difference between that and a wind vane? Let’s make one and find out:
A wind vane points in the direction that the wind is blowing from. Knowing that, you can talk like a meteorologist – if the wind vane is pointing toward the north, you will say that it’s a northerly wind. If you want to say where the wind is headed, add “-ward” at the end. In this case, a northerly wind (from the north) is equal to a southward wind (toward the south).
No matter whether the wind is blowing toward or away from you, be sure to hold onto your hat if it’s windy enough!
⛅️ Oct. 20 - Cloud scavenger hunt: This cumulus cloud won’t grow into a thunderstorm
You may already know that the puffy cumulus clouds that look like cotton balls in the sky can grow into big thunderstorm clouds, known as cumulonimbus clouds.
That doesn’t happen all of the time – some days, cumulus clouds look like only one or two layers of cotton balls piled on top of each other and stop growing after that. If all the ingredients for a thunderstorm are in place, the cumulus cloud will continue to grow into a thunderstorm and tower high in the sky.
Did you know that there are other cumulus clouds in the sky? One is called altocumulus and will never become a thunderstorm. What does this cousin to a cumulus cloud look like? Let’s go on a cloud scavenger hunt to find out:
🎨 Oct. 20 - Art Class: Make a pretty cloud collage
Let’s get artistic and make a pretty picture based on the four common types of clouds that you will see in the sky – even one that can cover the top of skyscrapers!
All you need for this art activity is a piece of construction paper (any color will do, but think about what color the sky is), cotton balls, glue (glue sticks tend to work best) and a marker:
After you are done, label the different clouds and put your artwork on the fridge!
⛅️ Oct. 16 - Cloud scavenger hunt: Clouds that make you think of asparagus
Clouds can have odd sounding names – shelf, mammatus and lenticular. Have you ever heard of an asperitas cloud? That cloud name starts like asparagus, but actually rhymes with margarita (which can only be sipped responsibly by adults!).
It’s time for a cloud scavenger hunt as we learn more about this cloud:
Some people may say that the cloud you saw above was an undulatus asperatus cloud (talk about a big word!). That name isn’t wrong, but that’s not the official name this cloud was given back in 2017 by the World Meteorologist Organization when it entered the International Cloud Atlas.
That’s right – much like there are different dog and cat breeds, there is a whole list of cloud types that make for pretty (and scary) sights in the sky!
🍳 Oct. 16 - Cooking Activity: Using eggs to understand weather maps
How can something as simple as an egg help meteorologists understand the weather? Let’s cook up some hard-boiled eggs and find out:
The exploding egg shows us how air will move from Hs (high pressure) toward the Ls (low pressure) that you see on a weather map.
For anyone hoping for a snow day in the winter, you want to see an L headed toward your community. As the air rushes toward low pressure, it has nowhere to go but up – and that leads to rain or snow (if the air is cold enough).
If you have an outdoor party planned, you want to see an H on the weather map. Sinking air around high pressure helps to keep the sky clear of clouds and wet weather.
Speaking of snow, it doesn’t have to be winter for snow to fall. It’s story time with the AccuWeather This Date in Weather History podcast as we hear when kids in the northeastern United States were able to make snowmen in mid-October 2009:
⚡ Oct. 13 - Shocking Truth: Sunrise is often the coolest time of the day
We all know that temperatures rise during the day and fall at night, but have you ever paid attention closely to your thermometer at sunrise? If so, you will notice that temperatures will keep dropping at and right after sunrise. How can that be since the sun is already up?
Pop-quiz time! When you turn on the oven, does it instantly turn warm? It takes a minute to start warming up, correct? The same thing happens with the sun and Earth.
Photo by AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Krissy Pydynowski.
Think of sunrise as you turn on your oven. It’s not until a little after sunrise when the sun will start heating the ground. Remember, it’s not the sun that warms the air. After soaking up warmth from the sun, the ground is what heats the air and causes temperatures to start climbing.
Speaking of thermometers, let’s learn how to make your own at home. You get extra credit if your thermometer turns into a volcano!
🔎 Oct. 13 - Weather Detectives! Frost with temperatures above freezing?
We learned a couple of weeks ago that frost forms when temperatures are at or below freezing (but frost is not frozen dew). What about the times when you’ve seen a forecast on your AccuWeather app that said “low of 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) with patchy frost.” How can that happen? We have the answer below:
Cold air is also more dense than warm air and will settle in the low spots of your yard – leading to frost in some spots and not others, much like in this photo:
Photo by AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Krissy Pydynowski
Cold air and water are more dense than warm air and water – what does that really mean? Cold air is essentially the boss over warm air – warm air can’t bump cold air out of the way. Here’s a fun experiment from AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls that you can do at home to see that in action:
🔬 Oct. 9 - Weather Lab: Wildfires can cause flooding?
Water puts out fires, so how can wildfires cause flash flooding? The answer lies in what the wildfire leaves behind:
To understand how a burn scar forms, let’s first learn more about trees and plants – they take a drink of water through their roots, not their leaves – which are coated in a way that causes water to roll right off of them. Our friends at NASA say that this coating is similar to wax.
The problem is that when plants and trees burn in a really bad wildfire this wax-like coating will eventually end up on the ground – that’s not good news when it rains.
Why not? Let’s head outside and put some Play-Doh in a flat circle on a pan. Now pour some water onto the Play-Doh and watch what happens:
Did you see how the water ran right off of the Play-Doh? That’s very similar to what happens over a burn scar when it rains. Soil charred by wildfires will soak up water about as well as pavement, and that’s not a lot of water!
⛹️♂️ Oct. 9 - Gym class: Don’t slip on wet leaves!
One of the best parts of fall is raking up leaves and jumping into the piles, wouldn’t you agree! However, fallen leaves aren’t as fun when they land on roads and sidewalks and get wet when it rains. Wet leaves can cause you to slip and fall and some cars to have accidents.
The main problem with wet leaves is that they don’t soak up water. The next time it rains around your house, head outside and look closely at the leaves. Just like in the video below, you will see little beads of water on the leaves.
Also, feel how smooth the leaves are when rain is falling. You can just feel how easy it is for your shoes or tires to slip on wet leaves!
Speaking of fallen leaves – after you’ve had fun jumping into the piles of leaves, many people bag up the leaves and throw them out. However, here’s a tip to make your yard greener next summer – let the leaves stay on the ground; they will turn into free fertilizer for the yard!
🔎 Oct. 6 - Weather Detectives! Why frost may not form under trees at times?
When you’ve woken up on a frosty morning, have you ever seen something similar to the photo below – where your yard and roof were covered with frost, but not the grass underneath a tree?
Frost covers a yard in central Pennsylvania (AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Heather Zehr)
Why is that? What keeps the ground underneath a tree warmer than the rest of the yard?
To answer this question, let’s look at the recipe card for frost to form:
Clear sky
Calm wind
Moisture
Temperatures at or below freezing
The first and last ingredients are the keys to why frost didn’t form underneath the tree – time to investigate further:
Before you put your sensitive plants underneath a tree so they won’t get killed by the frost, one thing to remember is that frost can form under trees if a night is chilly enough. It’s only on nights when temperatures are just low enough for frost when trees can keep the ground slightly warmer.
Did you know that there can be frost on your yard, roof and car even when your thermometer is reading above freezing? More on that to come next week!
📝 Oct. 6 - Pop quiz! Is it good or bad to see frost on your roof?
The next time you wake up on a frosty morning, check out your roof – do you see frost on it? If you answered yes and that it’s a good thing to see frost on your roof, you get a gold star for the day! Why is that the right answer? Let’s find out below:
Time for another pop-quiz! Look at the photo below. From what you just learned, why do you think that the roof on the left side of the home doesn’t have frost?
Photo by AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Krissy Pydynowski
There is likely no insulation over the garage, so heat can escape and prevent frost from forming. The house has a good blanket over it, allowing frost to whiten the rest of the roof.
Do you remember from last week, that frost is not frozen dew?
Additional experiments and reporting by Jason Nicholls.
Previously:
AccuWeather School Fall Semester: Weeks 4-5
AccuWeather School Fall Semester: Weeks 2-3
AccuWeather School Fall Semester: Week 1
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 13
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 12
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 11
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 10
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 9
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 8
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 7
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 6
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 5
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 4
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 3
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 2
AccuWeather Summer Camp: Week 1
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