All weather occurs within eight miles of Earth's surface.

All snowflakes have six sides or points.

The world's greatest 24-hour rainfall record was set in January 1966 on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean.

          A record 71.8 inches of rain fell

Tropical storms rotate clockwise south of the equator and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

A hurricane is given a rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale based on its sustained wind speed.

The Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF-Scale) is a system for classifying tornado intensity.

Waterspouts are tornadolike rotating columns of air over water.

A tropical storm must have winds of 74 miles per hour or greater to be classified a hurricane.

Tornadoes have been reported on all continents except Antarctica.

Contrary to popular belief, tornadoes can, and do, hit downtown areas of major cities.

          The city center of St. Louis, Missouri, has been flattened four times since 1871.

All thunderstorms produce lightning, which is what makes the sound of thunder.

The world's heaviest hailstones weighed up to two pounds each and killed 92 people in Gopalganj district, Bangladesh, on April 14, 1986.

The United States has more tornadoes than any other country.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 blanketed some areas of the Atlantic coast with as much as 50 inches of snow.

Waterspouts can make sea creatures rain down from the sky.

The eye of a hurricane is calm, but the eye wall that surrounds it has the strongest, most violent winds.

Snowflakes formed in clouds take about an hour to reach the ground.

Hurricanes, tropical cyclones, and typhoons all describe the same type of storm-what they're called depends on where they form.

When lightning strikes, the heated air creates a sonic shock wave, which is the sound of thunder.

We see lightning before we hear thunder because light travels much faster than sound.

The top speed of a falling raindrop is 18 miles per hour.

Crickets make good thermometers to get a rough estimate of the temperature, count the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and add 40.

Tornadoes usually spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

          The winds of a tornado are the strongest on Earth. They may reach a speed of 300 miles per hour.

Most hurricanes stretch about 300 miles across.

The Tri-State Tornado was the deadliest tornado in U.S. history.

          It traveled through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on March 18, 1925, killing 695 people.

Dirty snow melts faster than clean snow.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 convinced many people that passenger trains should run underground and helped to inspire cities like Boston and New York to build the first subway systems.

The fastest wind on Earth blew through the suburbs of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on May 3, 1999.

          The 301-mile-per-hour gusts were recorded during an EF5 tornado that destroyed hundreds of homes.

The most active Atlantic hurricane season on record was in 2020.

          The National Hurricane Center ran out of names and had to use Greek letters for the last several storms.

The Tri-State Tornado lasted 3.5 hours and traveled 219 miles-setting records for both duration and distance traveled.

Low barometric pressure generally indicates stormy weather, and high pressure signals calm, sunny skies.

          The lowest barometric pressure ever recorded was 25.69 inches (870 mb) during Typhoon Tip in 1979.

          The highest barometric pressure, 32.01 inches (1,083.8 mb), was measured in 1968 on a cold New Year's Eve in northern Siberia.

A tropical storm officially becomes a hurricane, cyclone, or typhoon when winds reach at least 74 miles per hour.

The deadliest storm on record was the Bhola Cyclone, which hit East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on November 13, 1970, killing at least 500,000 people.

          The Bhola Cyclone's winds were in excess of 120 miles per hour when it finally hit land.

          It generated an astonishing storm surge of 12 to 20 feet, which flooded densely populated coastal areas.