Temperature
Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest continent on Earth
El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922
The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983
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Rain
1 minute 1.23 inches (Unionville, MD. July 4, 1956)
1 day 73.62 inches (RØunion, Indian Ocean; March 15, 1952)
1 year 1,041 inches (Assam, India; August 1880-1881)
The total amount of precipitation the earth receives each year as snow, hail, and rain is equivalent to 10 million gallons of water for every person in the United States.
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Snow
1 day 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, Colorado; April 14-15, 1921)
1 storm 189 inches (Mt. Shasta, California; February 13-19, 1959)
Snowflakes typically fall from the sky at speeds between one and five miles per hour.
The largest snowflakes in the world fell across Fort Keogh in Montana (USA) on 28 January 1887. The flakes were measured at 15 inches across by 8 inches thick.
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Physical Facts
Weight of air: Cubic yard at sea level: over 2 pounds.
Weight of entire atmosphere: 5.1 million billion tons.
It takes about one million cloud droplets to provide enough water for one raindrop.
A cumulus cloud a km in every direction (a 1km cube) weighs over a million tonnes.
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Pollution
Air pollution
In Mexico City, only 31 days in 1993 had air considered fit to breathe
In Bombay, India, breathing the air is equivalent to smoking ten packs of cigarette a day.
Sun
The amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface is 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all human beings worldwide.
The total amount of fossil fuel used by humans since the start of civilization is equivalent to less than 30 days of sunshine.
Ice
The United States uses an estimated 10 million tons of salt each year to melt ice on the roads.
Erosion
Annual soil loss in South Africa is estimated at 300 – 400 million tonnes, nearly three tonnes for each hectare of land.
For every tonne of maize, wheat, sugar or other agricultural crop produced, South Africa loses an average of 20 tonnes of soil.
The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation, a branch of United Nations) estimates that the global loss of productive land through erosion is 5-7 million ha/year.
Also see “Dust”.
Note: This page is a collection of weather information from many sources.
We make no claims to accuracy – but we hope it is interesting. Feel free to send any weather and dust oddities gleaned from your own files to facts@weathersolve.com
Dust
During the 9-hour period of most vigorous activity on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens dumped more than 540 million tons of ash over an area of more than 22,000 square miles.
Space Dust: USGS estimates 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths’ surface.
Blown dust: A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet, where it’s caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust from China makes its way to North America, too.
Each year American vegetation sends out 1,000,000 tons of pollen into the air.
One million tons of Gobi Desert dust blow into Beijing each year. During a similar dust outbreak last year, the Associated Press reported that the visibility in Beijing had been reduced the point where buildings were barely visible across city streets.
April 14 1935 also known as Black Sunday, brought the worst single dust storm in the so-called Dust Bowl to western Kansas and the pan handles of Oklahoma and Texas. It arrived as a dense wall of blowing dirt that reached as high as 10,000 feet and moved at 60 mph
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Lightning
There are about 100 Lightning strikes per second worldwide Those are just the ones that hit the ground, though. There are another 500 per second cloud to cloud. For each lightning bolt that hits the ground, about 200,000 pounds of rain are also formed.
The longest-lasting lightning storm raged in Saturn’s upper atmosphere for more than eight months in 2009. The storm made lightning bolts that were about 1,000 times stronger than those on earth.
A bolt of lightning can stretch more than five miles long, and could contain 100 million volts of electricity.
Note: This page is a collection of weather information from many sources. We make no claims to accuracy – but we hope it is interesting. Feel free to send any weather and dust oddities gleaned from your own files to facts@weathersolve.com