17 Strange Weather Facts For An Odd Bay Area Summer Day
KPIX 5 Morning Weather Anchor Roberta Gonzales answers the questions you never get to ask on-air.
Q: Roberta, I really enjoyed your blog yesterday about dry lightning. What other fun facts do you have? - Robin Freeman, Campbell
A: Well, since it's Friday, let's call on "Storm Watcher Kennel" for totally useless fun Friday weather facts!
1. If the earth were flat, water would cover everything in a layer two miles deep
2. If you don't have a telescope projector or welder's glass to watch a solar eclipse, just look for the nearest tree. The shadows it casts will be in the same crescent shape of the eclipsing sun as an inverted image of it projects through gaps in the leaves.
3. "Monster" waves at over 100 ft. tall can suddenly appear at sea when there is no storm to cause them.
4. Socks and shoes may be knocked off if struck by lightning.
5. Colored moons are due to different atmospheric issues and could turn to colors such as blue, orange and red.
6. "Bloody rain" is red-colored rain which carries reddish sand from desert regions.
7. "Fire Whirl" is either a tornado spinning too close to a forest fire or a whirl created from too much heat in the area.
8. A fire rainbow is extremely rare: it occurs only when the sun is high, allowing light to pass through high-altitude cirrus clouds with a high content of ice crystals.
9. Sometimes fish can rain from the sky!
10. "Snow Rollers" are rare, large snowballs formed naturally as chunks of snow are blown by wind
11. Highest snowfall ever recorded was 1224 inches in one-year period
12. The metaphor once in a blue moon can literally happen, but very rarely, as the phrase implies :)
13. There are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms occurring in the earth's atmosphere at any given time.
14. The fastest wind speed ever recorded is 318mph in one of the tornadoes to hit Oklahoma on May 3, 1999.
15. Rain contains vitamin B12
16. The typical speed of a raindrop is 17 mph.
17. You can use pinecones to forecast the weather: the scales on the pinecones will close when rain is on the way