Clouds
These thin, wispy, high-altitude clouds are composed mainly of ice crystals.
What are cirrus clouds?
Air generally moves from areas of high pressure toward areas of this type of pressure.
What is low pressure?
On a weather map, a blue line with triangles represents this type of front.
What is a cold front?
Whether checking for a fever or measuring the temperature of the air, this instrument gets the job done.
What is a thermometer?
About 97% of Earth's water is found here.
What are the oceans?
This towering cloud type is responsible for most thunderstorms, lightning, and hail.
What is a cumulonimbus cloud?
This scale rates tornadoes from EF0 through EF5 based on estimated wind speeds and damage.
What is the Enhanced Fujita Scale?
A red line marked with semicircles represents this type of front.
What is a warm front?
Meteorologists use this instrument to measure atmospheric pressure.
What is a barometer?
This process changes liquid water into water vapor and sends it into the atmosphere.
This process changes liquid water into water vapor and sends it into the atmosphere.
This low, gray cloud layer often covers the entire sky and may produce drizzle or light precipitation.
What are stratus clouds?
This term describes the amount of water vapor actually present in the air compared with the maximum it could hold at that temperature.
What is relative humidity?
This front occurs when two air masses meet but neither is strong enough to replace the other.
What is a stationary front?
This instrument measures wind speed, often using rotating cups.
What is an anemometer?
Most of Earth's freshwater is stored in these frozen formations rather than rivers or lakes.
What are glaciers and ice caps?
This mid-level cloud type often appears as a gray or blue-gray sheet and can signal an approaching warm front.
What are altostratus clouds?
This temperature is reached when air becomes saturated and water vapor begins condensing.
What is the dew point?
This type of front forms when a faster-moving cold front catches up to a warm front.
What is an occluded front?
This instrument measures the amount of moisture, or humidity, in the air.
What is a hygrometer?
This process occurs when water vapor cools and changes from a gas into a liquid, helping clouds form.
What is condensation?
These rare, pouch-like formations sometimes appear underneath the anvils of severe thunderstorms.
What are mammatus clouds?
This effect causes moving air to curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and left in the Southern Hemisphere.
What is the Coriolis effect?
Compared with warm fronts, cold fronts generally have this type of slope, helping air rise more rapidly and sometimes producing severe storms.
What is a steeper slope?
This technology sends pulses of energy into the atmosphere and uses their return signals to determine precipitation location, movement, and intensity.
What is weather radar/Doppler radar?
This term describes water that falls to Earth and eventually flows over the land into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans rather than soaking into the ground.
What is runoff?