Weather Imagery

Hail forms in thunderstorms where the updraft is strong enough to carry water droplets and ice condensing nuclei high into the atmosphere where they interact and freeze turning into ice. When the weight of the ice is too heavy for the updraft to keep it suspended in the cloud or when the hail falls outside the updraft and is allowed to fall back to the ground, a hailstone is created.

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One of those massive notorious hailstorms that causes a lot of damage. The “white plague” as farmers in the Midwest call it, causes hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to crops each year. Insurance companies pay out millions of dollars each year to compensate for large hail damage to cars, houses, and other buildings left exposed. Towards the end of the video, you can see one guys car sustains some serious damage from the large hailstones.

This video is amazing for two reasons. One is, that was really darn close! The second is, whoever is filming is in a building, looking through a very small opening, happens to be looking in exactly the right place and at the right time just as a lightning bolt slams into a tree.

Hurricanes are the most powerful storms on Earth in terms of size, energy released, and the scale of damage thay can produced. If the winds are troublesome enough, the storm surge can be as high as 25 feet and often times causes more damage than the wind. However, tornadoes sometimes accompany the hurricane which makes some locations sustain far greater damage than the surrounding areas.

The terms typhoon and hurricane mean the same thing, that is, they are both non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure systems over tropical or sub-tropical waters with organized convection (i.e.; thuderstorm activity). They name corresponds to their geographic location of where they formed. For example, typhoons form in the Northwest Pacific Ocean west of the dateline. Hurricanes form in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Northeast Pacific Ocean east of the dateline, or the South Pacific Ocean east of 160E.

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I always find extreme weather records fascinating because some of them will just blow you away. If you think the weather is miserable or crazy where you live, take a look at some other places around the world. I think you’ll find most of these records absolutely mid boggling.

Temperatures

• Coldest temperature in USA: -80°F at Prospect Creek Camp in the Endicott Mountains of northern Alaska on Jan. 23, 1971
• Hottest temperature in USA: 134°F in Death Valley, CA on July 10, 1913
• Coldest Temperature in the World: -129°F in Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983
• Hottest temperature in the World: 136°F in Al’ Aziziyah, Libya on September 13th, 1922
• The USA hottest average temp: 77.7°F in the Florida Keys, FL.
• World’s hottest average temperature: 94°F in Dakol, Ethiopia
• Worlds highest dew point temperature: 95°F in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on July 8, 2003
• The largest 2-minute temperature change of +49°F occurred in Spearfish, South Dakota on January 22, 1943, at about 7:30am MST where the temperature rose from -4°F to 45°F.
• The largest 24-hour recorded temperature change occurred on January 15, 1972 in Loma, Montana, where the temperature rose from −54°F to 49°F.

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