Weather facts
Windiest place in the world
The windiest place in the world is Port Martin, Antartica. Here winds average more than forty miles per hour on at least one hundred days each year.
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World's largest snowflake
The largest snowflake ever measured fell in Montana on 28 January 1887. It was recorded as thirty-eight centimetres (fifteen inches) across and twenty centimetres (eight inches) thick.
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Increased sunshine in London
Bright sunshine has increased remarkably in the London area over the past one hundred years. At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century, vast amounts of smoke and soot in the atmosphere blocked out the sunshine. By the 1880s it was estimated that London’s sunshine was reduced by 80 per cent. As recently as 1921–50 central London averaged only 50 per cent of the winter sunshine of surrounding rural areas. Today, however, as a result of the vast improvement in air quality in inner London, the capital is on occasions sunnier than the outlying areas. This is because of the urban heating effect evaporating low cloud and fog.
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Heaviest recorded rainfall
The heaviest recorded rainfall occurred at Foc-Foc, Reunion, an island in the Indian Ocean, where 1,825 millimetres fell in twenty-four hours. In the UK the wettest day recorded saw 279.4 millimetres fall at Martinstown in Dorset on 18 July 1955.
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Definition of drizzle
Drizzle is defined as liquid precipitation in the form of drops with a diameter of less than half a millimetre.
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Effects of wind
The wind can have a significant effect on how cold or warm it feels. For example, a temperature of 4°C can feel like -10°C when there is a forty-five mile-per-hour wind blowing. Local winds can produce extreme weather conditions, for example the Chinook is a warm, westerly wind that blows on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, where temperature rises of 25–30°C have been recorded in just a few hours.
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Highest recorded temperature
The highest temperature ever recorded was 57.7°C on 13 September 1922 at Al Aziziyah, Libya. In the UK the record is 38.5°C, at Brogdale near Faversham in Kent.
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Lowest recorded temperature
The lowest temperature ever recorded was -89.2°C on 21 July 1983 at Vostok II, Antarctica. In the UK the record is -26.1°C at Newport, Shropshire, on 10 January 1982.
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Ballot's Law of low pressure
Ballot’s Law states that when in the Northern Hemisphere if you stand with your back to the wind low pressure will always lie to your left.
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Invention of the lightning conductor
Benjamin Franklin invented the metal lightning conductor in 1752. Until then, dozens of church spires and towers were destroyed by lightning strikes every year.
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Deaths from lightning strikes
The annual average number of fatalities from lightning strikes each half century in England and Wales has fallen from nineteen from between 1852 and 1899, to twelve between 1900 and 1949, to five between 1950 and 1999. This marked reduction, despite a three-fold population increase, reflects: fewer people working out-of-doors; increased safety conditions at work, for example electricity pylon repair workers are given warning of any thunder-storms approaching their location; and better awareness of the dangers of lightning and safety precautions that can be taken to avoid strikes.
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Most lightning strikes to a single person
Ex-park ranger Roy Sullivan holds the world record for being the most lightning-struck person. Between 1942 and his death in 1983, Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times. The first lightning strike shot through Sullivan’s leg and knocked his big toenail off. In 1969, a second strike burned off his eyebrows and knocked him unconscious. Another strike just a year later, left his shoulder seared. In 1972 his hair was set on fire and Sullivan had to pour a bucket of water over his head to cool off. In 1973, another bolt ripped through his hat and hit him on the head, set his hair on fire again, threw him out of his truck and knocked his left shoe off. A sixth strike in 1976 left him with an injured ankle. The last lightning bolt to hit Sullivan sent him to the hospital with chest and stomach burns in 1977.
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Earliest known tornado
The earliest tornado known in Britain is also the most severe on record. The violent (T8) tornado hit the church at St Mary le Bow in central London on 23 October 1091. The church suffered extensive damage: four rafters, each 7.9 metres long, were driven into the ground with such force that only 1.2 metres protruded above the surface.
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Largest tornado outbreak
The largest tornado outbreak known in both Britain and Europe occurred on 21 November 1981: 105 tornadoes were spawned by a cold front in the space of five and a quarter hours. Excepting Derbyshire, every county in a triangular area from Gwynedd to Humberside to Essex was hit by at least one tornado, whilst Norfolk was hit by at least thirteen.
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Solar halos
In the winter in Antarctica ‘solar halos’ are frequently seen, these are optical atmospheric phenomena that are produced by the scattering of light by ice particles suspended in the air. Another optical atmospheric phenomenon seen in the Antarctic is a Föhn bank, which produces the illusion from a distance, that the land is covered by a huge duvet. It is formed by a Föhn wind, a warm contour-hugging wind that causes snow and ice to sublime, that is, turn directly from solid to a gas without passing through a liquid phase, therefore causing a cloud layer that can be seen. The ‘solar pillar’ is another of these phenomena, where the sun’s reflection is almost as bright as the sun itself. Like a rainbow, this sight is dependent on where the light is coming from and where the observer is standing.
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Effect of weather on business
In 2001 the Meteorological Office commissioned an independent study into the impact of the weather on British business. The study shows that whilst over 95 per cent of those questioned admit they have lost up to 10 per cent of their profits in the past year alone due to unexpected weather (causing late or absent staff, delayed deliveries, surplus or insufficient stock and cancellation of projects), only 25 per cent say they occasionally take the weather into account when planning ahead.
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