There are all types of strange weather around our Earth. Here you have a Web Quest that will bring you closer to finding about different unusual weather related phenomena. The purpose of this activity is for you to find out what each of these weather phenomena is and for you to categorize the terms according to weather they relate to severe weather, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, manmade versus natural, etc.
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1 You are already familiar with snow, sleet, and frozen rain, but what is "rime ice"?
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2 Can you name at least five different symptoms of "weather sensitivity"?
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3 What is cromnyomancy? Can you design and experiment?
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4 What is an orcan? How does or does not relate to a hurricane?
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5 What does the term "pahoehoe" refer to?
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6 What are "lahars"?
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7 You already know what a thunderstorm is, but what is thundersnow? What does it consist of?
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8 What does "graupel" mean?
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9 What is a "train" in relation to a tsunami?
Extensions
Integrate some of the concepts and content through a geography lesson by teaching students how to locate the most significant disaster (earthquakes, volcanoes, nor'easters, tsunami). Here the five geography themes of location (where is it?); place (what is it like?); human/environment interaction (what do people do there?; movement (how do people interact?); and regions (how are areas the same?) will be explored.
Designing and testing weather related forecasting methods. Throughout the times, people have attempted to predict the weather by looking at the skies the night before, observing wind direction, even looking at the moon. Here you have an old saying, "Pale moon doth rain, red moon doth blow, white moon doth neither rain nor snow" (Watson, 2003). Could you prove or disprove scientifically this statement? How would you design an experiment to know if there is any truth to it? Could you forecast the weather by using onions?