Wild Weather Educational Posters
for classrooms and homeschoolers.

Avalanche Poster

Avalanche

Avalanches, a high speed flow of snow, happen when a snowpack is too large for the slope to support it. Avalanches among the biggest dangers in the mountains for both life and property. (available as part of set only)

Blizzard Poster

Blizzard

A severe winter storm with low temperatures, strong winds, and heavy blowing snow is a blizzard. The word ‘blizzard’ to describe a severe snow storm seems to have come into use in the late 1800s in the American midwest; the word may be related to the German ‘blitz’. (available as part of set only)

Drought Poster

Drought

A drought is when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply, usually caused by consistently below average precipitation for an extended period of months or years. While deserts are defined as places where rainfall is less than 10" a year, desertification, the process of degradation of land, happens when the demands of increased population stress water supplies. (available as part of set only)

Flood Poster

Flood

A flood is water that is outside of the normal perimeters of a river, lake, or ocean. Flooding can be caused by heavy rain, either seasonal or from tropical storms, and/or rapidly melting snow; coastal flooding can occur when high tides combine with storms that surge the ocean water inland.

Hail, Sleet, Ice Poster

Hail, Sleet, and Ice are forms of precipitation:

Hail consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice called hail stones.

Sleet is the intermediate between rain and snow, distinct from hail stones.

Ice is frozen water and variably describes as rain that freezes on contact with objects when it falls.

available in set only

Hurricane Poster

Hurricane

Tropical storms in the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Pacific Ocean east of the dateline, and in the South Pacific Ocean east of 160°E, are called hurricanes after the Amerindian storm god Huracan (Spanish huracán).

• more hurricane posters

Thunderstorm Poster

Thunderstorm

A thunderstorm is characterized by lightning, the atmospheric discharge of electricity, and thunder, the sound of the sonic shock wave caused by the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning and lightning bolts. A thunderstorm can also called an electrical storm or lightning storm.

FACTS from poster text:

• Rubber soles on shoes and rubber on vehicle wheels provide NO PROTECTION from lightning.
  
• The average lightning bolt is 6 miles (10km) long.
  
• An average New Mexico thunderstorm generates more energy than the first atomic bomb that was tested in New Mexico.
  
• The strong upward currents in heavy thunderstorms have been known ot lift objects such as fish and frogs which then appear to be raining from the sky.
  
• Lightning moves about 30,000 times as fast as a bullet.
  
• Lightning can carry enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 3 months.
• The air around a lightning bolt can be around 54,000˚F (29,972˚C), which is about 6 times hotter than the surface of the sun.

FYI - to type the ˚ symbol for “degree” is option + k on your keyboard.

Tornado Poster

Tornado

While most tornadoes occur in the midwest United States they also commonly occur in southern Canada, south-central and eastern Asia, east-central South America, Southern Africa, northwestern and central Europe, Italy, western and southeastern Australia, and New Zealand. They have never been observed on the continent of Antarctica. (available in set)

FACTS from poster text:

• In an average U.S. tornado season around 800 twisters are confirmed touching down.
• During a 1943 tornado in Charleston , South Carolina, thunder was heard, and ran and hail fell from the sky – along with an alligator!
• The single largest outbreak of twisters is 148 tronadoes in just 16 hours over 19 U.S. states.
• Twisters are classified into six categories of wind speed (F0 through F5), using the Fujita Intensity Scale.
• Only 2% of the tornadoes reach F4 or F5 status, with F5 tornadoes packing winds in excess of 260 MPH!
• The longest tornado path on record is 5 miles (8 km) with the width of 2 football fields.
• Tornadoes are the most violent winds on earth. These twisters can produce wind speeds as high as 300 miles per hour, travel longer than 100 miles (161 km) and reach up to 20,000 feet (6,096 metres) above ground.

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
• Twister, DVD