Extreme Weather Phenomena Quiz

A tornado is a violent, rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the earth's surface. The United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country in the world.

Category 5 is the highest rating on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, with sustained winds exceeding 157 mph. These storms cause catastrophic damage and can level well-built homes.

The eye of a hurricane is a roughly circular area of calm weather at the storm's center. It is surrounded by the eyewall, which contains the most intense winds and rainfall.

A blizzard is defined by winds of at least 35 mph, heavy snowfall, and visibility reduced to less than a quarter mile for at least three hours. The Great Blizzard of 1888 buried parts of the northeastern United States under several feet of snow.

Typhoons are tropical cyclones that form in the Western Pacific Ocean. The same weather system is called a hurricane in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, but the science behind all three is identical.

Lightning superheats the surrounding air to about 30,000 Kelvin almost instantly, causing it to expand explosively — and that rapid expansion creates the sound wave we hear as thunder. Because light travels faster than sound, you see the lightning before you hear the thunder.

El Nino is a climate pattern marked by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. It can trigger droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events worldwide and occurs every two to seven years.

A haboob is an intense wall of dust and sand blown by strong downdraft winds from a collapsing thunderstorm. These dramatic storms are common in the Sahara Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, and the American Southwest.

The Fujita Scale, developed by Dr. Ted Fujita in 1971, rates tornado intensity from F0 (weakest) to F5 (strongest) based on the damage they cause. It was updated to the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale in the United States in 2007.

A waterspout is essentially a tornado that forms over — or moves onto — a body of water. They are most common in tropical and subtropical waters and can occasionally move onshore, bringing dangerous winds to coastal areas.

The World Meteorological Organization recognizes 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 C), recorded at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California on July 10, 1913, as the highest air temperature ever measured on Earth. An even hotter reading of 136 F claimed in Libya in 1922 held the title for ninety years before being investigated and invalidated in 2012, which restored the Death Valley record.

Ball lightning is a rare and still scientifically unexplained phenomenon reported as a luminous, spherical object that moves slowly through the air before silently vanishing or exploding. Witnesses have described balls ranging from golf-ball to basketball size in colors of white, yellow, orange, or red.

Texas averages more tornadoes per year than any other state — well over 100 annually — largely because of its enormous land area and its location in Tornado Alley, where warm Gulf air collides with cooler northern air. Smaller states like Oklahoma and Kansas see more tornadoes relative to their size.

Meteorologists informally call hailstones measuring about 4 inches in diameter 'softball hail.' The largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States fell in Vivian, South Dakota in 2010, measuring 8 inches in diameter and weighing nearly 2 pounds.

Sun dogs (also called parhelia) are formed when sunlight refracts through flat, hexagonal ice crystals drifting horizontally in high cirrus clouds. They appear as bright, colorful patches roughly 22 degrees to either side of the sun and are most visible when the sun is low on the horizon.