Busting Weather & Climate Myths
Common Weather Myths
In reality, lightning can strike the same location multiple times, especially if it’s a tall, pointy, isolated object. The Empire State Building alone is struck by lightning approximately 25 times per year!Â
A condensation funnel is the visible part of the tornado. Strong wind gusts can be anywhere within a severe thunderstorm, not just within the tornado. And don’t forget all that heavy debris that the tornado has lofted into the air…what goes up must come down…potentially on your head!
Don’t bother either opening or closing your house windows in case of tornado – if your house is hit by debris the windows will likely break. This is a good way to be injured during a storm, so please avoid being near any windows.
Heat lightning is the commonly-used term for distant lightning, often too far to hear the thunder. If you can see lightning (and even if you can’t see it), you can be struck by lightning. “Bolts from the blue” do happen miles from thunderstorms!
While experienced storm chasers know how to safely get out of the way of a tornado…most enthusiasts do not. You’re better off hiding in an underground or specially-made tornado shelter. Avoid being in a car or mobile home during a tornado – these are death traps!
Actually, it’s the metal frame of the car that conducts lightning around you, acting as a Faraday cage. Yeah, rubber shoes won’t protect you from lightning either.
The safest place to be during lightning is in a fully enclosed building or in a car (windows closed). You can still be struck by lightning under a park shelter.
While mountains may disrupt the path and intensity of tornadoes, tornadoes DO rarely happen in the mountains. It may appear to some enthusiasts that tornadoes don’t cross tribal land or rivers, but severe weather doesn’t care about such boundaries. Most tornadoes are fairly short-lasting, weak, and small, so it’s not likely that most areas will be affected, just a very small path. Â
Experienced storm chasers know that when there’s “greenage” in a storm, it’s likely due to hail, not a tornado. The sky can turn all kinds of scary colors during a severe thunderstorm, making it appear eerie, but this is mainly an effect of sunlight passing through the precipitation in the storm and scattering different colors.
Common Climate Myths
While it’s true that climate change includes natural variability in cycles, human activities have had a noticeable effect on our climate as well. Scientific evidence shows that the current rate of climate change is much faster than past natural changes, largely due to human activities like burning fossil fuels.
There’s actually an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that human activities are driving recent global warming, not just natural cycles.Â
Climate involves more than individual events – it requires watching weather data for decades or longer to understand patterns. Current climate change predictions include more extreme weather events like stronger and more numerous hurricanes plus really hot or really cold events. So events like ice storms becoming more common actually provides additional evidence that climate change IS happening!
There is plenty of evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (like methane from cows we raise for food) are significant enough to disrupt the natural balance and enhance the greenhouse effect.
While no model is perfect, climate models have successfully predicted many changes we’ve observed on Earth, including warming oceans and rising sea levels, making them valuable tools for understanding and forecasting climate change. As we better understand how complex systems interact, climate and weather models continue to improve.