Whatever the weather we are not happy. Us Brits love moaning about the weather, too hot, too cold, too windy, too sunny, not sunny enough, haven’t had weather like this for ages, can’t wait for summer, this summer has been going on a bit long… you name it we bloody love moaning about it. On the Brink of storm Brian, Brin, Bertie or whatever significant storm is heading our way we ramp up the moaning and groaning, waiting, just waiting for the devastation after the storm, for it to never come, to only moan that the storm was not as powerful as predicted.
British pessimism aside, what are storms and why do we get them?
Names
Firstly, every year since 2015 the Met Office (Meteorological Office) releases the names of the storms for the coming year, the names of storms go from A-W. Leaving out Q, U, X, Y & Z because the U.S. Hurricane Centre finds it difficult to find names that start with those letters, so to keep consistency we followed suit.
This year in 2020 the names are Atiyah, Brendan, Ciara, Dennis, Ellen, Francis, Gerda, Hugh, Iris, Jan, Kitty, Liam, Maura, Noah, Olivia, Piet, Róisín, Samir, Tara, Vince & Willow
The more observant of you all will notice that the storms alternate boy and girl names, and interestingly the storms with girls names tend to cause more casualties. Scientists think that this is because female names are less threatening and people take less precautions ahead of and during the storm.
Not all storms get a name from the UK list, if the storm starts in another country like the U.S.A. then it keeps it’s name when it gets to the U.K. Not all storms get a name anyway, the only ones that do are thought to have the potential to cause significant damage. Usually when it is marked as ‘Amber’ be prepared, or ‘Red’ Take action.
You can take part in naming storms for the Met Office here.
Storms
A storm is created when low pressure forms within a system of high pressure – (low pressure spins clockwise & high pressure spins anticlockwise). Imagine this as wind. When the winds are travelling in opposite directions it can create clouds like cumulonimbus – see article on clouds – a storm cloud.
Winds
Wind is produced by the uneven temperature of the earth. Hot air rises as it rises the denser cold air rushes in to take its place. That air moving across the surface, we feel as wind. Wind is commonly measured in the Beaufort wind force scale of 0 – 12
Terminology for Wind & the Beaufort Scale
- Calm – 0 – (1mph)
- Light air – 1 – (1-3mph)
- Breeze – 2,3,4,5 (4-24mph)
- Squall – 6 (25-31mph gusts that last over 1 minute)
- Gale – 7,8 & 9 (32-54mph)
- Storm – 10 & 11 (55-72mph)
- Hurricane – 12+ (73+mph)
- Light air – 1 – (1-3mph)
Rain
Taken from – Weather predicting using clouds.
The tiny water droplets float around in the cloud and bump into each other sticking to each other, something we call cohesion. All this cohesion makes the water droplets larger and this means they are less able to fight the pull of gravity and when the pull is too much, they fall from the sky, creating rain. Rain drops can vary in mass from drizzle at 0.004mg and the largest during a storm at 300mg.
Lightning (and thunder)
Lightning is created when heavier (negatively) charged particles sink to the bottom of a cloud and the positively charged particles rise to the top. When there is a large build up of both it creates a spark, this is what we see as lightning and hear as thunder. We do not see and hear lightning at the same time because light travels much faster than sound.
Light travels at 299792458 meters per second and sound travels at 343 meters per second. If we round down sound to 333.3 meters per second that makes one second roughly 1Km away. Therefore if you count the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing it it will give you the approximate distance in Km – (seconds divided by 3). If you count multiple times and you are counting more seconds the storm is heading away from you, likewise the storm is getting closer if you count less seconds.
Mostly I hope you enjoy this years storms and have fun knowing a little more about the weather.
You can find out more from the Met Office.