Download Precautions Severe Weather Name

Precautions Severe Weather
Name: ___________________________________________________________ Period___________ Date:__________
Essential Question: How do I protect myself from severe weather?
Thunderstorm and Lightning Safety: pp. 336, table 13-1. Think!
1. What should you do when you hear thunder? ___________________________________________________
2. Lightning hits the highest object on an area, explain why you should NOT take shelter under an isolated tree
during a thunderstorm? _____________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Why should you get off a boat and away from water during a thunderstorm? Think!
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
4. What should you do if you are caught outdoors and there is no shelter nearby during a thunderstorm?
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
c. _______________________________________________________________________________________
Tornado Safety: pp. 340, table 13-3. Think about your answers!
5. Why is the basement the safest place to be when there is a tornado?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Why should you stay away from windows during a tornado?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
7. If you are caught outside or in a _________________, lie __________ in a nearby ___________ or depression.
8. Are mobile homes safe during a tornado? Explain your answer. Think!
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Hurricane Safety: pp. 346, table 13-5. Think about your answers!
9. Why should you turn on the refrigerator to the maximum cold settings and open it only when necessary
when expecting extreme weather? Think! _______________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
10. Why should you unplug all small appliances when there is extreme weather? __________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
11. Why should you turn off propane tanks during extreme weather? ____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
12. What should you do when the wind becomes so strong?
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
c. _______________________________________________________________________________________
d. _______________________________________________________________________________________
Read and Answer the questions. page 354 – Science and Technology: Taming Lightning
13. Why do scientists experiment with lightning in a laboratory in Canada?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
14. Each year in the United States, lightning accounts for ________________ forest fires, roughly _____________
deaths , several ______________________ injuries, and millions of dollars in damage to _______________.
15. What is a lightning-protection system? _________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
16. What is the function of aluminum or copper in the lightning-protection system? _______________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
17. Who is Benjamin Franklin? ___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
18. Why is there a need to have an up-to date weather information?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
___19. Thunderstorms USUALLY happen in which kind of weather?
A) warm and humid
B) warm and dry
C) cold and sunny
D) cold and cloudy
___20. In which severe weather event should you move to higher ground?
A) hail
B) flash flood
C) high wind
D) tornado
___21. Which is an example of dangerous behavior during a thunderstorm watch?
A) going to a basement
C) playing football in the open filed
B) listening to a weather radio
D) practicing your safety plan
___22. What is the BEST thing to do if you see lightning while you are outside in the field and no shelter is
in sight?
A) run around the field B) yell for help
C) hide under a tree
D crouch on the ground
___23. Why is it important to stay away from windows during a thunderstorm and tornadoes?
A) high winds can shatter glass
C) the metal around windows conducts electricity
B) windows get very hot during lightning flashes
D) you might block your teacher’s view of the storm
___24. What should you do if you hear a severe weather watch on TV or the radio ?
A) turn off the electricity
B) make a safety plan and practice it
___25. What is a storm surge?
A) Abnormal rise of water generated by a storm, over and above the predicted astronomical tide.
B) Swirling air due to the mixing of warm and cold air masses
Multiple choice:
____ 26. Layer of the atmosphere where severe weather happens.
____ 27. Causes storm surge.
____ 28. Hurricanes form above warm water and _____air.
____ 29. Weather front that results to thunderstorms.
____ 30. Lightning usually hits the _____ object.
____ 31. Abnormal rise of water due storms.
____ 33. Safest place during a tornado.
____ 34. Stay away from the _____ during a tornado.
____ 35. Evacuate to ________ in the event of a storm surge.
____ 36. Type of cloud where thunderstorms form.
____ 37. The air masses that come from south.
Draw the symbols:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
Storm or hurricane
Window
Humid
Cold front
Storm surge
Basement
Troposphere
Warm and dry and
warm and humid
I. Tallest/highest
J. Higher ground
K. Cumulonimbus
Draw the circulation of wind during:
Warm front
Stationary front
Cold front
Occluded front
Good weather
Hurricane
Answer Key.
19. A
20. B
21. C
22. D
23. A
24. B
25. A
26. G
27. A
28. C
29. D
30. I
31. E
32. F
33. B
34. J
35. K
36. H
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
Troposphere
Storm or hurricane
Humid
Cold front
Tallest/highest
Storm surge
Basement
Window
Higher grounds
Cumulonimbus
Warm and dry and
warm and humid
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Weather Service, approximately 1,800 thunderstorms are occurring at
any given time, resulting in about 16-million thunderstorms each year. Most
thunderstorms last about 30 minutes and are typically about 15 miles (24 km) in
diameter. The two biggest threats associated with most thunderstorms
are lightningand flash floods. To understand why thunderstorms occur more often
during the warm months requires some understanding of thunderstorm basics.
Thunderstorms thrive under certain conditions. The two most basic elements that
cause a thunderstorm to develop are:

Moisture

Rapidly rising warm air
Because moisture and warmth are crucial to thunderstorms, it makes sense that they would occur more often in the
spring and summer, particularly in humid areas such as the southeastern United States. The high humidity, in
conjunction with warm temperatures, creates massive amounts of warm, moist air rising into the atmosphere, where it
can easily form a thunderstorm.
Where does the thunder (and lightning) come from? The basic idea is that thunder clouds can become giantVan de
Graaff generators and create huge charge separations within the cloud. Let's look at how it works.
Clouds contain millions and millions of water droplets and ice particles suspended in the air. As the process
of evaporation and condensation occurs, these droplets collide with other moisture that is condensing as it rises. The
importance of these collisions is that electrons are knocked off of the rising moisture, creating a charge separation.
The newly knocked-off electrons gather at the lower portion of the cloud, giving it a negative charge. The rising moisture
that has lost an electron carries a positive charge to the top of the cloud.
As the rising moisture encounters colder temperatures in the upper cloud regions and begins to freeze, the frozen
portion becomes negatively charged and the unfrozen droplets become positively charged. At this point, rising air
currents have the ability to remove the positively charged droplets from the ice and carry them to the top of the cloud.
The remaining frozen portion either falls to the lower portion of the cloud or continues on to the ground.
The charge separation has an electric field associated with it. Like the cloud, this field is negative in the lower region
and positive in the upper region. The strength or intensity of the electric field is directly related to the amount of charge
build-up in the cloud. As the collisions and freezing continue to occur, and the charges at the top and bottom of the
cloud increase, the electric field becomes more and more intense -- so intense, in fact, that the electrons at the Earth's
surface are repelled deeper into the Earth by the negative charge at the lower portion of the cloud. This repulsion of
electrons causes the Earth's surface to acquire a strong positive charge.
All that is needed now is a conductive path so the negative cloud bottom can conduct its electricity to the positive
Earth surface. The strong electric field creates this path through the air, resulting in lightning. The lightning is a highvoltage, high-current surge of electrons, and the temperature at the core of a lightning bolt is incredibly hot. For
example, when lightning strikes a sand dune, it can instantly melt the sand into glass. The combination of the rapid
heating of the air by the lightning and the subsequent rapid cooling creates sound waves. These sound waves are what
we call thunder. There can never be thunder without lightning.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/storms/question646.htm