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60 free Weather Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
55 free Weather Trivia for Kids questions with answers. Why is a rainbow always red on the outside? How do you count how far away lightning is? Which continent is the coldest, windiest and driest all at once? This weather quiz for kids covers the water cycle, clouds, rain, snow, hail, wind, fog, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, the seasons and the instruments meteorologists use, in 55 multiple-choice questions. The first two-thirds are pitched at ages 8 to 12 and work well for a classroom warm-up, a rainy-day game or a science unit on weather. The last third gets harder, with world records and the history of forecasting, so parents and teachers have something to sweat over too. Everything is age-appropriate: no disaster death tolls, just the science and the surprising numbers. Every answer was checked against NOAA, the National Weather Service or an encyclopaedia entry, and each question shows its source and a short explanation once you answer.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which colour is on the outer edge of a rainbow?
Red
The full order is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, remembered as Roy G. Biv.
Q 02Where must the Sun be for you to see a rainbow?
Behind you
Rainbows always appear in the part of the sky opposite the Sun, and from an aeroplane you can sometimes see the whole circle.
Q 03What are clouds mostly made of?
Tiny water droplets and ice
The droplets are so small that they float on rising air, which is why a cloud can hold tonnes of water and still hang in the sky.
Q 04What do we call a cloud that forms right at ground level?
Fog
By definition it cuts visibility to under one kilometre; anything lighter is called mist.
Q 05Which cloud type is the tall, anvil-topped one that produces thunderstorms and hail?
Cumulonimbus
These giants can tower 12 kilometres high, and the flat anvil forms when the rising air hits the top of the troposphere and spreads out.
Q 06The thin, wispy clouds high in the sky that are made of ice crystals are called what?
Cirrus
The name is Latin for a curl or tendril of hair, and their arrival often means stormier weather is on the way.
Q 07Who gave clouds their Latin names like cumulus and stratus, in 1802?
Luke Howard
He was an English pharmacist and amateur meteorologist, and his system caught on so fast it is still used worldwide.
Q 08In the water cycle, what is it called when water vapour in the air turns back into liquid drops?
Condensation
It is the same thing that happens on the outside of a cold drink on a hot day, and it is how clouds and fog form.
Q 09What powers the water cycle?
Energy from the Sun
The Sun's heat lifts water into the air as vapour; the Moon's pull only moves the tides.
Q 10Roughly what share of Earth's water is in the oceans?
97%
The total amount of water on Earth stays almost constant; it just keeps moving between sea, sky, land and ice.
Q 11What is the word for water vapour that plants release into the air?
Transpiration
A big tree can breathe out hundreds of litres of water a day, which is one reason forests feel cooler.
Q 12What shape is a large falling raindrop really?
Flat underneath like a bun
Tiny drops are round spheres; air pushing up on bigger drops squashes their bottoms flat.
Q 13What is the special word for the earthy smell in the air when rain falls on dry ground?
Petrichor
Two Australian scientists invented the word in 1964 from the Greek for stone and the fluid said to flow in the veins of the gods.
Q 21Which US ski area set the world record for snow in one season, 95 feet of it, in 1998-99?
Mount Baker, Washington
That is 95 feet of snow, enough to bury a nine-storey building.
Q 22Balls of ice that grow inside thunderstorm clouds and fall in summer are called what?
Hail
Strong updrafts toss the ice up and down through the cloud, adding a new layer each trip, like an onion.
Q 23The record US hailstone fell on Vivian, South Dakota, in 2010. Roughly how big across was it?
8 inches
It weighed almost two pounds, roughly the size of a volleyball, and it had already partly melted before it was measured.
Q 14Which village in India is said to be the wettest place on Earth?
Mawsynram
It gets nearly 12 metres of rain a year, most of it in the summer monsoon, and villagers weave giant grass umbrellas to work outdoors.
Q 15The seasonal wind that brings India about 80% of its yearly rain is called what?
Monsoon
The word comes from the Arabic mawsim, meaning season, and farmers across South Asia plan their whole year around it.
Q 16The Atacama, the driest non-polar desert in the world, is in which country?
Chile
Some weather stations there have never recorded rain, and NASA tests Mars rovers in its dust.
Q 17How many sides does a snowflake crystal have?
Six
The six-sided shape comes from the way water molecules lock together as they freeze, so every branch grows at 60-degree angles.
Q 18Ice is clear, so why does snow look white?
Light bounces off all the crystal surfaces
The same trick makes crushed clear glass and sea foam look white too.
Q 19About how wide were the biggest snowflakes ever reported, seen by a Montana rancher in 1887?
15 inches
A rancher near Miles City described flakes bigger than milk pans; nobody has photographed one nearly that big since.
Q 20For a snowstorm to count as a blizzard in the United States, winds must reach at least what speed?
35 mph
The snow also has to cut visibility to under a quarter of a mile for three hours; deep snow alone does not make a blizzard.
Q 24In the United States, what does the word 'sleet' mean?
Small pellets of frozen raindrops
In Britain the same word means snow that is partly melting into rain, so the two countries argue about it every winter.
Q 25What makes the sound of thunder?
Air heated by lightning expanding explosively
The air around the bolt heats to about 30,000 degrees Celsius in a split second, hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Q 26You see lightning and count 10 seconds before the thunder. About how far away was the strike?
2 miles
Sound takes about five seconds to travel a mile, and thunder can only be heard about ten miles from the flash.
Q 27How often does lightning strike somewhere on Earth, on average?
44 times a second
That adds up to roughly 1.4 billion flashes a year, most of them over land in the tropics.
Q 28Which body of water in Venezuela has more lightning than anywhere else on Earth?
Lake Maracaibo
The Catatumbo lightning there flashes about 250 times a day, and sailors once used it as a natural lighthouse.
Q 29When lightning hits sandy ground it can melt the sand into glassy tubes. What are they called?
Fulgurites
The name comes from fulgur, the Latin word for lightning, and some dug-up tubes are several metres long.
Q 30The record-setting lightning megaflash recorded in April 2020 stretched roughly how far?
477 miles
The megaflash crossed Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and was measured from a satellite; in 2025 the WMO certified an even longer 515-mile flash from 2017.