Getting your questions ready
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50 free Weather trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Why do raindrops fall as hamburger buns rather than teardrops, how hot is a lightning bolt, and where does it rain nearly 12 metres a year? This weather trivia with answers covers rain, lightning and thunder, tornadoes and hurricanes, snow and hail, clouds, fog, wind, and the hottest, coldest, wettest and driest places on Earth. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Almost all of Earth's weather happens in which layer of the atmosphere?
Troposphere
The troposphere is the lowest layer; weather in the stratosphere exists but is poorly understood.
Q 02Contrary to the classic drawing, large falling raindrops are shaped most like what?
Hamburger buns
Small droplets are spherical; as they grow they flatten underneath, and very large ones look like parachutes.
Q 03Which town in Meghalaya, India, is reportedly the wettest place on Earth?
Mawsynram
It averages about 11,872 mm of rain a year, though two Colombian towns dispute the title.
Q 04Cherrapunji holds the record for the most rain in one month. Roughly how much fell in July 1861?
9,300 mm
That is over nine metres in a single month; the town also holds the 12-month record of 26,471 mm.
Q 05Which desert is the driest non-polar desert in the world?
Atacama
Some of its weather stations have never recorded rain; it may have had no significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971.
Q 06Very light, sporadic rainfall is known by what name?
Drizzle
A shower is brief and moderate, a cloudburst brief and heavy, and a downpour prolonged and heavy.
Q 07What is the globally averaged annual precipitation over the whole Earth?
990 mm
Over land alone the average is lower, about 715 mm, because the oceans get more rain.
Q 08The air around a lightning flash heats to roughly what temperature?
30,000 °C
That is several times hotter than the surface of the Sun, which is why the air expands explosively into thunder.
Q 09After seeing lightning, divide the seconds before thunder by what to get the distance in kilometres?
Three
Sound travels about 343 metres per second, so roughly three seconds per kilometre or five per mile.
Q 10Where on Earth does lightning occur most often?
Lake Maracaibo
The Catatumbo lightning over the Venezuelan lake produces about 250 bolts a day.
Q 11Roughly what share of people struck by lightning survive?
90 percent
Survivors often suffer lasting damage to internal organs and the nervous system.
Q 12Which country has by far the most tornadoes in the world?
United States
Most strike the central and southeastern US, colloquially known as Tornado Alley.
Q 13The widest tornado on record, about 2.6 miles across, struck which town in 2013?
El Reno, Oklahoma
A 2004 tornado in Hallam, Nebraska had held the record at up to 2.5 miles wide.
The record-long 1925 Tri-State Tornado crossed Missouri, Illinois and which other state?
Q 21A Category 5 hurricane has sustained winds of at least how many mph?
157
The scale was devised in 1971 by engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson.
Q 22Atlantic hurricane name lists skip Q, U, X, Y and which other letter?
Z
Six rotating lists of 21 names alternate male and female, and notorious storms have their names retired.
Q 23What happens to the name of an especially deadly or costly hurricane?
It is retired from the lists
A replacement name is picked at the next meeting of the WMO Hurricane Committee.
Indiana
It stayed on the ground continuously for a record distance on March 18, 1925.
Q 15What radar signature helps forecasters spot a tornado forming?
Hook echo
Pulse-Doppler radar reveals hook echoes and debris balls in the velocity and reflectivity data.
Q 16A tornado over water is called what?
Waterspout
Tornadoes travelling over water can turn white or even blue.
Q 17A hurricane in the Atlantic is called what when it forms in the northwestern Pacific?
Typhoon
In the Indian Ocean and South Pacific the same storms are simply called tropical cyclones.
Q 18In the Northern Hemisphere, a tropical cyclone's surface winds blow in which direction?
Counterclockwise
The Coriolis effect reverses the spin south of the equator, where cyclones rotate clockwise.
Q 19Tropical cyclones rarely form within how many degrees of the equator?
5°
Too close to the equator the Coriolis force is too weak to set the storm spinning.
Q 20About how many named tropical cyclones form worldwide each year?
80 to 90
More than half of them develop hurricane-force winds of 75 mph or more.
Q 24The strongest wind gust ever recorded, 408 km/h, was measured where in 1996?
Barrow Island, Australia
It came during Cyclone Olivia and beat a 1934 record of 372 km/h from Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
Q 25The Beaufort wind scale was devised in 1805 by an officer of which country's navy?
Britain
Francis Beaufort's 13 classes originally described the effect of wind on a frigate's sails, not speeds.
Q 26What is the highest force on the standard Beaufort scale?
12
Force 12 is "hurricane force"; the original scale ran from zero to 12.
Q 27The Spanish-derived name for a long, straight-line windstorm is what?
Derecho
The word means "straight", in deliberate contrast to the "twisted" tornado.
Q 28A haboob is an intense storm made of what?
Dust
The Arabic term was first used for dust storms in Sudan and applied to North American storms in 1972.
Q 29Which Montana town holds the record for the biggest 24-hour temperature swing, 103 °F?
Loma
A Chinook wind lifted the temperature from −54 °F to 49 °F on January 15, 1972.
Q 30The Blackfoot people call the warm Chinook wind by what name?
Snow eater
The föhn wind warms as it descends the eastern side of the Rockies, melting snow rapidly.