| Question | Answer |
| What is the height of the water in the river? | The rivers stage |
| What is a flood stage? | when the river starts to threaten the surrounding area |
| What is a river's floodplain? | the area that has been repeatedly inundated by the river |
| What is a levee | a naturals or artificial wall around the river that prevents the river from spilling onto the flood plain |
| The area that drains into a river, stream, lake, or ocean? | a drainage basin or watershed |
| Continental divide | separates the drainage basin that emptys into different oceans |
| short local floods that occur mostly on small portions of streams or river valleys, often with little or no warning | flash floods |
| occur on larger scales and develop more slowly, usually from many storms or melting snow over a big area | widespread floods |
| when storm surge from tropical or midlatitude cyclone produces a temporary rise in lake or ocean levels | coastal floods |
| what is the biggest hazard of deaths | hot weather |
| what is measured in the heat index | air temperature and relative humidity |
| sunlight adds how much temp to the heat index values | 15 degrees |
| what does extreme danger on the heat index mean? | Heat strokes or sunstroke highly likely |
| Heat cramp | painful spasms, usually in muscles of leg or abdomen, heavy sweating. Apply pressure on cramping muscles; give victim sips of water |
| Heat exhaustion | Heavy sweating cold, clammy skin, thready pulse possible nausea, fainting or vomiting. Give victim sips of water seek immediate medical attention |
| Heat stroke | high body temperature, hot dry skin, rapid and strong pulse, possible unconciousness. Do not give fluids to victim; seek immediate emergency aid |
| One way heat waves form during the summer | High pressure system aloft produces strong solar heating, the high then subsidences to the earths surface |
| low temperature inversion happens when? | during the end of a heat wave |
| Who is at greatest risk during a heat wave? | the inner city (can not leave windows open during the evening) |
| rimming | snowflakes can become coated in supercooled water in this process |
| graupel | what snowflakes become when coated in supercooled water, form as embryos around which hailstones form by continuing to collect supercooled water |
| Where do graupels occur? | between 0 and -15, especially updrafts of 22 mph or more |
| Graupels need snow plows? | yes, occasionally |
| largest hailstone recorded? | 1.9 pounds, 8 inches in diameter |
| Radiations electric and magnetic fields are always perpendicular to each other and to the direction of travel | Unpolarized radiation vibrates randomly in all directions; polarized radiation vibrates in predictable direction |
| unpolarized radiation | the orientation of the field changes randomly |
| a polarizing filter | only allows vibrations in a certain direction to pass through it, splits the red and blue arrows, and only allowing the ups and down component to pass through the filter |
| incoming sunlight is... | mostly unpolarized |
| when the sunlight becomes polarized when... | the polarizing filter shown here is turned to an angle that removes most of the light reflecting off the waters surface |
| wearing polarized glasses | to see through a car windshield that's being covered by a continuous sheet of heavy rain |
| air must reach the electrical gradient of what before it allows the current to flow between positive and negative charged areas | 1,000,000 |
| interference charging | one of the mechanisms that can produce strong areas of negative charge near the bottom of thunderstorm and areas of positive charge near the top of the storm |
| lighting can heat the air to what temperature? | 30,000 kelvin |
| sound travels how fast? | 343 meters per second |
| light travels | 300,000,000 meters per second |
| thunder takes 5 seconds to travel how far | 1 mile |
| What are strong downdrafts that descends from cumulus clouds to the groud, can exceed 100 mph winds | downbursts |
| if downbursts winds extend no more than four km in any horizontal direction | microbursts |
| downburst larger than 4 km | macroburst |
| microbursts are more likely to form when what is larger what is? | ELR |
| wet microbursts | have precipitation or virga and thus can often be detected visually or with radar |
| dry microburst | have no precipitation which which can make them very difficult to detect with radar or visually, sometime rising dust on the ground will will away their presence |
| hurricanes can only form in areas where the sea-surface temperature is what? | 27 degrees Celsius |
| air rises and produces what that powers hurricanes | latent heat realease |
| hurricanes require what from coriolis so their central low pressure isnt filled in by convergence? | large scale rotation |
| when do most tropical storms happen? | September |
| The ITCZ is the greatest source of what type of storm? | thunder storms that become hurricanes |
| what besides ITCZs also produces hurricanes? | easterly waves and mid-latitude cyclones that more over tropical waters |
| Which type of storm is well-organized which is why they can last over four days? | hurricanes |
| what helps a hurricane prevent its downdrafts from cutting off its updrafts? | rotation |
| what warms the air that sinking within the hurricanes eye so that it is very warm when it reaches the surface? | adiabatic compression |
| what can enhance the instability within the eyewall? | the surface winds |
| WRF stands for what? | Weather Research Forecasting |
| What direction of rotation can make winds on the right side of a hurricane stronger than on the left side? | Lefty-LOWsie |
| Northern Hemisphere tornadoes form most frequently on which side of the hurricane? (relative to hurricanes movement) | right |
| winds in a hurricanes eye wall are much faster than on the adjacent eye because? | wind shear |
| the resulting vortices and updrafts can create what? the can play roles in hurricane intensification and promote tornado outbreaks within some hurricanes | hot towers |
| What is a major cause of storm surge? | Strong winds create large waves |
| What is a major cause of storm surge? | The air pressure in a hurricane is lower than in surrounding areas so the air pushes down on the water within a hurricane than on surrounding waters, creating higher water levels near the hurricane |
| What is helping to predict hurricanes paths? | numerical models, computer programs, simulated weather processes using physics |
| What does SLOSH stand for? | Sea, Lake, & Overland Surges from Hurricanes |
| What does SST stand for | Sea-Surface Temperature |
